The Wall Street Journal has gotten hold of a trove of internal Facebook documents and is publishing a series of stories about what it's found. Today the focus is on Instagram, and specifically on the impact Instagram has on teen girls:
For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls.
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues.
....“Social comparison is worse on Instagram,” states Facebook’s deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that “keep the focus on the face.” In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle.
At first I found this all pretty plausible, and I suppose I still do. Still, girls are exposed to unrealistic body expectations starting with Barbie dolls in early childhood and extending later to TV, magazines, the internet, videogames, and more. They are practically surrounded by it, and I started to wonder if trading some hours of, say, TV for a few hours on Instagram really made a big difference.
I don't know if there's any way to answer this, but the Journal article did suggest that Instagram's impact on body issues was producing an increase in eating disorders. I could at least check that, and here's what I found:
This is all people with eating disorders, not just teen girls, and it only goes through 2017. Still, Instagram has been a Facebook property since 2012, and if it's had more than a trivial impact on eating disorders you'd expect that it might show up in the overall data. But obviously it doesn't. The share of the population with eating disorders has dropped steadily over the past decade, exactly the period when Instagram use was rising.
In the end this probably doesn't tell us anything firm, but it seemed worth throwing out there. In any research of this kind, the proper question to ask is "compared to what?" Instagram might well have a negative effect on teenage girls, but to know if it's truly dangerous you have to ask "compared to what?" That is, what would teenage girls be doing if they weren't on Instagram, and would it be better or worse? That question doesn't seem to have been addressed.
Where is your data from? I'm skeptical. Even a loose definition of 'eating disorder' does not get you to 45-50 per cent of the population. Also mixing males and females would make the effect on females smaller. Ditto with adults vs teens.
I did find this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28251592/
"Are eating disorders and their symptoms increasing in prevalence among adolescent population?"
...which is suggestive but not definitive. Another study found a large increase during covid.
Yeah, I'm curious as to what definition of "eating disorder" this graph is representing.
Still, as a pediatrician, I can report that anorexia and bulimia are not up. What is up is anxiety, depression, and gender dysphoria.
Helena's story is exemplary. She was a middle class white straight girl, insecure about her "hotness," and this led her to identifying as a trans man. She walked into Planned Parenthood soon after her 18th birthday and was started on testosterone on an "informed consent" basis. She took T for about two years, but the second time she was hospitalized with psych issues she realized the T was not improving her life and she stopped. (The doctors told her no, the T is not behind this.)
For her, it was Tumblr, not Instagram. Here is a piece she wrote: https://4thwavenow.com/2019/03/
Perhaps related:
Just saw Caitlyn Jenner got over 52,000 votes.
Who are these people?
If you voted no on recall why not vote for a fuck up candidate? Thanks to Dem strats Paffrath never became an alternative. So who the fuck does it matter who you put down for part 2?
Since around 40% of the US adult population is classified as obese, and there must be another large proportion which is overweight, the "eating disorder" could not possibly be only anorexia. All this is for adults (20 and over) and teenagers are certainly thinner. But if Instagram does encourage teenage girls to be too thin, they must get over it pretty fast as they age.
There's a big difference between body weight and what girls think about their body weight.
I can see how Instagram is a stronger influence than TV or other forms of traditional media. In traditional forms of media you can easily dismiss the people as actors and/or models, generally unrepresentative of everyday reality.
On social media, your "next-door neighbor" is beautiful, fit, smart, funny, and gets promoted by views, likes, and the number of followers. The most popular posts amplify and reinforce the notion that your "next-door neighbors" are beautiful, fit, smart, funny, and that you're the one falling short.
That's one metric and not one that makes a direct comparison to the population in question. I think the slide may tell us more. If the execs in charge of Instagram have some data and are concerned there's a problem, there probably is one.
Joe Scarborough is on an anti-social media rant this morning... Their product is causing anxiety and depression and...!!!
Pick your poison. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, porn, gambling, religion, social media... millions of people do all that stuff without any real effect. Columbia university professor Carl Hart is a well known advocate for using heroin. He's fine I guess. So this really isn't about the the poison as much as it is about the people using or abusing them. Vulnerable people are always going to suffer when they find just the right poison.
So let's just all admit that charts can be made to show, on average, most people are just fine, on average. Most people won't get COVID either. So what do we do about the "vulnerable"? I say leave them be. Good luck.
I didn't (/couldn't) read the article, but I think another key data point is what percentage of teenage girls are actually on Instagram? The smaller the percentage, the less likely it'd show up in general data.
And I imagine that Instagram use attracts body-conscious people, so the base population of Instragram users is not representative of general population. Which I guess is similar to your last point "compared to what?".
wut?
75% of US teens 13-17 use instagram.
lol, obviously I don't know any teenagers.
I recently listened to one of those "body image" discussions where one woman was still traumatized by a casual remark, from somebody she didn't even know, back when she was 12 years old, that it was surprising that somebody from her ethnic group could be pretty.
The discussion focused on how awful it was for people to say such terrible racist things. But my read was that the truly awful part was that girls and women, in general, have such heightened sensitivity about how other people view their appearances. That's the problem -- that females actually CARE about these superficialities.
It's not racist to have an aethetic preference for one group over another. That is a hill I will die on.
Thanks for missing my point.
Well, the message to girls is that your value is based entirely on how attractive you are. That's been the case for a very, very long time.
When is the last time you saw an unattractive but successful woman with a really hot husband? What if you reverse the genders?
The problem is that for girls especially attractiveness is a proxy for being liked, loved, popular, having status, not being bullied. Of course boys are also judged on appearance but there is more weight on factors such as intelligence, skill, athleticism, etc. Those qualities are amenable to improvement through work. The things girls are judged heavily for they have less control over which can lead to anxiety and depression.
TL;DR it's not looks per se, it is what looks MEAN.