Here's the chart that launched a thousand headlines about Instagram's impact on the body image of teenage girls:
This data is for teens who reported having a problem in one of the 12 areas the researchers asked about. The question presented to the teens was whether Instagram had helped them with their problem(s) or made things worse.
Among boys, the impact of Instagram was overwhelmingly net positive on every dimension.
Among girls, the impact of Instagram was net positive in 11 areas and net negative solely for body image.
I have no independent opinion on whether this research was properly done. However, to the extent that it's worth reporting on, its conclusions are clear: With only one exception, Instagram is very strongly a positive influence for teens who report social problems.
I don’t even know what Instagram is.
And to be honest I have no interest in finding out.
Place to post photos and short videos with captions. Some really great stuff on there. Some not as great stuff on there.
Facebook with a lot more pictures/videos and a lot less words. Basically, nonstop television starring you, your friends and advertisers/influencers.
I always find it a bit amusing when people proudly say how ignorant they are about some sort of widespread popular thing. Not saying you should necessarily engage with that thing, but being totally clueless about what it even is and not being at all curious isn't really a badge of honor in my opinion.
& this concludes Words of wisdom from Sig Heil Hitler 88.
Oh, it's him?
Huh?
Uh huh. YGC
Is there a jabberwocking glossary of references and acronyms someone can pass along? no idea what you guys are talking about. but to be honest, i DO have interest in finding out!
YGC = You Got Caught.
doing what?
Quit playing dumb.
Well I’m not dumb, in that I can deduce that you seem to think I’m some other poster under a new name, but I’m not and truly have no idea who you’re talking about. I assume there’s a way to look up my (relatively few) comments on this blog, and I’m not sure how any of them suggest I’m a nazi or something. Seriously, you guys are way off here.
I find it a bit amusing when people say that if something is "some sort of widespread popular thing," and other people are not at all curious about finding out more about it, that's supposed to be a strike against the people who don't want to know any more.
In the case of Instagram, to find out more would likely mean creating an account. About 2 out of 3 people don't have an account, so that's a lot of people with a lot of strikes against them.
“ In the case of Instagram, to find out more would likely mean creating an account.”
No. All it would require is knowing how to spell Wikipedia. And, of course, the patience to read and digest the VERY long, VERY detailed article.
Sure. You could do that. A whole lot fewer people read that page than sign up, which is probably quicker anyway. One way gives you information about the service, the other gives you experience using the service.
But that's still no reason why anyone has to be curious enough to do either.
Ok, I mean in the end you spent more time telling people how you don’t know anything about it and why than it would have taken to know something about it. It’s my opinion that knowing things is better than not knowing things, but we’re all entitled to our opinions.
As Bill Clinton would say, nobody likes fat women.
And so so wrong.
I've been meaning to reply to something Facebook related for some time, but have been thwarted by an even worse commenting system than Coral. Which is, just wow, a statement because Coral was the worst commenting system until whatever this is.
I buy into, to some extent, Drum's focus on Fox News over Facebook, but it felt inadequate because clearly Facebook has a very negative effect on all sorts of social and political discourse not only in the U.S. but globally. At the same time I wasn't exactly sure how to make the case that Facebook is at least as bad, if not worse than Fox News.
So, here is my attempt at countering Drum's argument that Facebook is just as bad as we all think it is and even worse, if only marginally, than Fox.
It's the reach that it has to disseminate dangerous "information" that is completely unsourced and do so to people who never watch Fox News. Obvious examples, that are well documented, involve countries where Facebook has enabled genocide in countries where not even Murdoch's malevolent tentacles hasn't reached, mostly because there hasn't been enough money to justify his intrusion.
Here is but one example: https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/how-facebook-is-complicit-in-myanmars-attacks-on-minorities/
But, even if we narrow the scope to the U.S., Facebook amplifies and is more influential in disseminating absolutely crazy and dangerous material far more effectively than Fox News. Of course, a good amount of the crazy and dangerous material may start with, say, Tucker Carlson, but I think Facebook is more effective at influencing bad behavior than Fox for the very reason Facebook exists, which is that you are getting advice from your "friend" or just some ordinary Joe that you somehow trust more than any mainstream source of information. To people susceptible to conspiracies they will trust some random "person" on Facebook more than any mainstream source of which even Fox News is a member of.
The bottom line is that Facebook has far more influence on the actual behavior of people consuming the disinformation (and, yes, much of that disinformation comes from Fox, but by no means all) that Facebook's platform is very much designed to disseminate.
Wow, this commenting system sucks so bad you can't even edit a comment...
I had some typos and grammatical errors, but my real bottom TL;DR line is that Facebook, I think, influences and effects bad behavior to a far greater degree than does Fox News.
Mr.Pug:
Welcome to the default WordPress commenting system. It was designed ~20 years ago to accommodate the bloggers of the day who posted three times a week and whose readers may have numbered in the tens -- basically, family and friends. As blogging morphed into an online adjunct to Big Media, money got involved, professional writers were hired to post ten times every day, and huge audiences wanted to have their say in the comments. Third-party comment systems were developed that could handle the load, and -- more importantly -- keep readers coming back.
Those systems are not affordable (not just financially, but in the time and know-how it takes to set them up) for an individual blogger, but the default system is still available. That's what Kevin is using here. Enjoy!
Zuckerberg is a Republican party boss. Of course he wants his elites to win. So he allows them wide room to contact push propa, censor liberals. Libtards should bring it on and make stuff up. You gotta play the game.
U
Not a party boss, yet, but definitely part of the last wave of GQP dominance in Virginia in the late 90s & early 00s.
He's Richard Spencer with a better haircut.
I find the calls on the left to regulate social media a bit scary. I'm not suggesting no regulation might be called for, but I'd urge caution, and I think we're very far from having enough dependable information to formulate a sensible policy.
1) How does Instagram's purported effect on the mental health of teenage girls compare with movies? TV commercials? Magazine covers? Tiktok? Youtube? Should those platforms likewise be regulated?
2) If we're going to regulate Facebook, should we also regulate Twitter? Should the government force the latter to let Trump back on?
For the record I can't stand Facebook's flagship product, but I do like Instagram for posting photos.
More like institutional liberals. The left,,,,,not really. This is not new though.
I agree the calls to regulate social media are misguided. The only solution is to quit using it. Those who propose to regulate it won’t quit it. It’s kind of hypocritical.
What concerned me was that they were getting ready to target an Instagram app specifically at kids before putting it on hold after their internal documents started showing up. Heightening conflict while tapping the gambling buttons inside their under ripe noggins like a monkey on crack, sending them off to their own app to percolate just doesn't sound like the best idea.
I love the phrase “net positive”. What is the nature of the negativity?
Child abuse.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/child-sexual-abuse-images-online-exploitation-surge-during-pandemic-n1190506
Well… it’s only a little child abuse. On average, the effect is positive. 😂
More on the negative… but still not making up for all the awesome goodness of social media!
“A Louisiana high school student is facing a felony charge of battery after she punched a teacher several times in a classroom on Wednesday, the authorities said, an attack that was recorded on video and may have been inspired by a TikTok challenge.”
“Investigators seized the cellphones of some other students who recorded the attack, according to Sergeant Masters, who said that at least one of the videos had been posted on Instagram and Snapchat.”
Thank goodness we have Instagram! It’s a net positive! Just a few bad apples. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
I am a father to three girls and grandfather to one girl
Saying that:
"and net negative solely for body image."
The term solely is clever in that it implies ONLY. So teen girls body image is the ONLY problem.
Isn't that enough? Its kinda like saying crime went down but the sole statistic that went up was murders.
Body image is what has spawned MANY problems for teenage girls including anorexia and a host of psychological problems. It's hard enough to grow up - why make it harder when teen girls are "supposed" to look like a certain movie or TV star?
Kevin this whole post is wrong. You can do better
This is only what teenage users say about the effect of Instagram, not the actual effect. Do so many teenagers really find that Instagram has had favorable effects on them with respect to all these issues, including such things as financial stress? How exactly would Instagram use do that? If a person regularly uses Instagram, maybe that person would be inclined to give "made it better" response on all or most questions, to justify their use of the platform. This might be investigated by seeing correlation among answers for individual users. Of course the teenagers could be evaluated by experts, but that won't happen. I doubt if the conclusion that Instagram is a mostly positive influence is justified by this survey. Surveys are not as easy as they look.
Where the survey could be most valid is in flagging issues which even the teenagers themselves think are causing problems, and that seems to mean body image. And even teenagers tend to think they use Instagram too much.
Blustering on the House or Senate floor about the latest threat to our young virgins, or to our "way of life" is nothing more than a lifetime employment opportunity for politicians. They are always several steps behind the world, and all they can do to get reelected is pump up the shock and the appearance of their own moral outrage and that of their constituents, in hope the show will be good enough to get picked up for another season. They were able to tame some of the worst instincts of the early industrialists and railroad barons, but they are over their heads trying to deal with the monster known as the internet. We all are.
Monetized abuse, monetized support, monetized interconnectedness, monetized monetization. Remember that's what this is all really about.