The less I want is to defend Facebook but I think lately people don't want to acknowledge their own responsibilities. It's like every time there is a problem, the cause is someone/something else. I don't think Instagram is impossed to anyone. Young people can feel the pressure to use it because their friends use it but they aren't forced to do so.
From the article it seems that young girls know about the toxicity in the application, why they keep using it? if their parents are aware too, why do they let their daughters use it?
I have a personal grudge against anyone saying "Why don't the parents take some responsibility to combat a multi-billion dollar company who puts the resources of small countries in to making their children behave in detrimental ways."
But I'll not get in to that. :)
Facebook and Instagram are drug dealers. Sure, they're not physically distributing a substance, but the social interactions they provide are every bit as addictive. In time, society will abolish or tightly constrain them in the same way society has banned other highly addictive substances.
I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives, whether acknowledged or no. It is likely the case that parents will forever be the most influential people in someone's life and the positions you take, the behaviors you engage in, and what you teach will stick with them for their whole lives. Take a stance and teach them. They may rebel, they may not, but years down the road your opinion will likely inform their reflections and help guide their future actions.
>I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives
I don't work in behavioral science, but this isn't my understanding. I was under the impression that research indicates peers are the larger influence, which can be tempered somewhat by parents. For an easy example, whether or not peers smoke is a better predictor than whether parents smoke.
Well to elaborate on that… kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger.
Those are their peers.
They aren’t their friends. Kids make their own friends, but it’s unusual for them to be able to make lifestyle choices like where they live before adulthood.
To note, your peers aren’t people on Instagram per se. I’d guess a study on the issue would say that a peer group they associate with on daily basis like in school would have more of an effect on their choices than Instagram influencers.
>kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger.
True, but for most people this is only available within a subset of constrained choices. Parents in rural Appalachia or the rust belt probably aren’t going to have a lot of Phillips Academies to choose from
As a person who grew up in rural Appalachia certainly Phillips was not an option. But, choosing a municipality with an emphasis on the value of education certainly was something my parents actively did. And, we had families across the economic spectrum in my school.
Thanks for weighing in with your experience. I grew up in a dying industrial town in the rust belt and choices were very limited. It might be possible for a slightly better school by moving but it would incur penalties most families couldn’t afford (higher home prices, 2-3 hr round trip commutes etc)
I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives
You might say that, but you would be wrong. Parents of teens have been the most influential people in their lives up to them becoming teens. Part of the process into adulthood is to break away from that pattern, to explore and build connections outside the family sphere. That's why teens are the most vulnerable demographic for a lot of things -- their brains are in the process of rewiring themselves for more personal responsibility and less parental oversight. So they're actively seeking to avoid parental control, but haven't yet learned to correctly weigh and assess long-term effects of their decisions.
Agreed, and the parent comment hasn't done that. Its identified a shift and a period of time that indicates the (usually) first shift of its kind in a person's social life.
While parents may or may not be the “most” influential people in a child’s life, I think it is certainly possible that the influence of parents/family/tribe can decrease in relation to the influence of the broader world due to changes outside of the parents’ control.
I certainly think the internet gave me access to many more humans, ideas, and tribes than my parents' generation had access to, and it would be hard for me to see how it would have been possible for my parents to have as much influence on me as their parents had on them.
I would even say it is indisputable there are forces beyond parents’ control unless the parents opt to live an Amish lifestyle, such as using devices connected to the internet and various social networks. If you do not give it to your kid, someone at school will, and even more, you probably need to teach your kid how to play the game rather than have them start it blind while the other players have experience.
There are different levels of influence, though. Yes, parents can assert a lot of control over their children, but at a certain age they start looking at their peers and being influenced by them to a tremendous degree.
And not all parents realize, or can realize, everything that goes on in their childrens' lives.
Parental control cannot and can never be used as a singular or even more influential factor to societal level problems. Parents can have all the best intentions in the world but if the society they’re trying to raise children in is broken, they can’t protect those children forever.
It isn't about protection. It is about values and moral principles. Parents can teach children tools about self control and mindfulness about evaluating if things are good for them or not. Teens and young adults have to explore and figure out their place in the world apart from their parents, but the skills and values taught are often transcendent of the shifting values in culture.
Let's face it, powerful forces in our society discourage self-control and critical reflection, and culture encourages people to have children regardless of whether they have learned those skills
This is true, and people with highly involved parents, on the average, destroy their lives with drugs less frequently than those with absentee or abusive parents. We still throw heroin dealers in jail.
> If you teach your kids not to consume drugs, why Instagram should be any different?
Imagine if all the other kids at school used drugs on a daily basis, that there was advertising plastered everywhere telling you that drugs are cool, that successful people use drugs and that your worth in this world can be directly tied to successful use of drugs.
I don't mean to sound mean here, but are you a parent? If not I suspect you're not really aware of the realities of parenting, particularly once a child becomes teenage. You can only do so much. And you certainly can't win against a multi-billion dollar enterprise determined to make your rebellion-inclined teenager do something.
This is quite an interesting thought experiment. As noted by @aspaviento, they were able to resist smoking, regardless of surrounding influences.
Do you have any comments on the tactics used by cigarette companies -- specifically in the United States -- before the 1998 "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement"? When I was a kid, the amount of advertising by tobacco was incredible. It was unavoidable and everywhere... and any cool or famous seemed associated with cigarette companies.
Even if you ignore smoking cigarettes, the topic of smoking marijuana will surely be a major issue for current and next gen parents. How would you parent around this issue? It is so complex.
> Do you have any comments on the tactics used by cigarette companies -- specifically in the United States -- before the 1998 "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement"?
The tactics worked? Rates of smoking used to be way higher in the past.
I don't want to use myself as an example because it's just my experience but when I was young people around me smoked, many of my teachers smoked and in TV and movies smoking was still accepted as something approved by society. But I was taught not to do it and never did it.
With this I just want to say that I know it's a difficult task but presenting it as a lost battle/impossible seems to me wrong.
I know you probably intuit this based on your pre-emptive caveat about anecdotal evidence, but a quick online search seems to indicate that your experience may not be the norm.
"Peers’ smoking is the strongest predictor of adolescent
smoking."[1]
[1] Gecková, A.M., Stewart, R., van Dijk, J.P., Orosová, O.G., Groothoff, J.W. and Post, D., 2005. Influence of socio-economic status, parents and peers on smoking behaviour of adolescents. European addiction research, 11(4), pp.204-209.
> With this I just want to say that I know it's a difficult task but presenting it as a lost battle/impossible seems to me wrong.
The thing is, we made headway in the battle against smoking by disallowing people from doing all those things. You're not allowed to market to kids, you're not allowed to depict smoking in most TV that kids are likely to watch, you're not allowed to smoke in or near schools and teachers who do are frowned upon. Cigarettes themselves are taxed heavily specifically to price young people out of getting into the habit, vendors are required to card, and the cigarette makers are even required to pay into a fund that promotes anti-smoking messaging.
So yes it is definitely not an impossible task. But the things that make it possible require taking it seriously as a danger and addressing it collectively.
So not all young people in your time were taught similarly. Or if they were, those teachings didn't stick.
Ideally the number of minors smoking would be zero. I don't think that's a radical idea, and I hope it's something that everyone can agree on. "Teachings from parents" obviously didn't achieve that goal, from your own experience.
In some respects, "Say No to Drugs" seems out of date when some very advanced democracies have already legalised some drugs or are close to it. That said, I understand your sentiment. No parent should be encouraging their children to become habitual cocaine users!
One thing that does some "obvious" for this generation of parents: Work hard to educate your children on the dangers of traditional cigarette smoking. That is a seriously terrible habit for your health and well-being. I feel much less so about vaping (e-cigarettes), as the health effects of nicotine addiction are still far lower than traditional cigarette smoke inhaled into the lungs.
> In some respects, "Say No to Drugs" seems out of date when some very advanced democracies have already legalised some drugs or are close to it.
I think there's a certain nuance there. Drugs (which ones?) can (should?) be legal - or at least their consumption decriminalized. We've made good progress already and yet much more is to be made.
But all this is not saying that drugs should be pushed hand over fist down people's throat and that billions should be spent on studying the ways people can be more encouraged to become drug users.
And this is what Facebook et al are doing. They are spending untold resources on devising the most efficient ways of making people addicted and ensuring that no other way exist of satisfying the cravings. They create echo chambers and push specifically topics that get the most response out of people.
And this is completely legal (currently). Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok etc... are allowed to be cool, hip, desirable and consumed in ways that the tobacco industry couldn't imagine in their wildest dreams during their heydays.
These companies can tap into the deepest secrets and desires of vast swathes of people in ways that is unprecedented.
I feel that the vices of the old world, like drugs, are chickenshit compared to the power that the new vices can wield over their captives.
You've now got me picturing a guy holding tablets in a trench coat in a dark alley with asking some teenagers passing buy if they wanna buy some time on social media.
"I got it all, buddy. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook...I can hook you up."
What will be the crack and cocaine in this situation? What other untold horrors will unfold while privileged or naive citizens and politicians all around stay cozy whilst the war on drugs caused havoc and destroyed so many lives and communities.
“We” certainly blamed the users of addictive substances and vilified or at least looked down on them. That is until it was heavily white and middle class or above people with opoids. Even then it was slow, but some things were done. Far more than what was done with other highly addictive substances. It’s a disgrace.
I shutter to think any drug banning history happen in any other context.
Ditto for online pornography. And unlike chemical drugs that have to be transported and administered, these images and videos fly through the wires into childrens' bedrooms.
I know, because like most children, I was exposed to online porn at a young age and was addicted to it well into my adult life. These companies need regulation, because they are bad actors.
Nah. That's been studied heavily. Here's an overview from the National Institutes of Health.[1] Wikipedia has an overview.[2] The overall conclusion is that most of the research is of terrible quality and there's no big measurable effect.
Here is strong evidence to the contrary from the NIH:
>The proposed DSM-5, slated to publish in May of 2014, contains in this new addition the diagnosis of Hypersexual Disorder, which includes problematic, compulsive pornography use. Bostwick and Bucci, in their report out of the Mayo Clinic on treating Internet pornography addiction with naltrexone, wrote “…cellular adaptations in the (pornography) addict’s PFC result in increased salience of drug-associated stimuli, decreased salience of non-drug stimuli, and decreased interest in pursuing goal-directed activities central to survival.”
No, nothing needs regulation. Stop making the internet fucking worse. Can we go back to 2000 now (not that it was good then either since the internet was fundamentally broken already)? This is like the bat shit insane morons who think having a popup about cookies on every page is solving the """privacy""" issue.
Literally every single political issue on HN is bogus. Take the ad blocking issue for instance, nothing that has ads actually matters. Your "solutions" like Brave are pure garbage.
The "privacy" issue doesn't exist because if we were using sane tech instead of webshit, there wouldn't be any tracking since it wouldn't be conceptually possible. Why the hell can tech even track you in the first place for reading static documents? This is a poor analog that cannot even compete with paper newspapers (which are also much more legible because they are not on LCDs).
Net neutrality doesn't matter because nobody can ELI5 why I should care about it. Since the internet is all garbage, it shouldn't be an issue that it's expensive. Just don't use it. Make a free replacement. Cuban citizens have already done it.
Now let me try and list CURRENT_YEAR.addictions:
- Games
- Working out
- Porn
- Social media
- TV (youtube or whatever you use now)
- HN (muh dunning kruger syndrome, imposter, et al)
- Eating
- Lotto tickets
- Stock market
- Programming
- Working
- Drugs
- Things that are sort of drugs but not
- Any substance what so ever
- Benchmarking
- Politics
- Literally any hobby
Oh look guys, HN needs to be regulated because I can come up with a person who has problems because of it.
Guys we need to regulate fat and high calorie food. Oh wait it grows on trees.
People who see a problem and immediately go "we need regulation to solve this" (and even proceed to come up with some ad-hoc hypothesis of how it solves the problem after it's proven that it doesn't solve it in a substantial way) are morons. There is actually something wrong with their brain. They hold back progress. Every new law is a potential stumbling block for progress and thus why new legislation should be avoided at all costs. See MECHANISM NOT POLICY article on wikipedia to see how people already knew about this 70 years ago in tech.
This is a hyperbolic statement. Even if you are just talking about internet regulation.
Let's imagine for a moment that someone invented a hypnosis algorithm and hosted it on a website. Anyone going to this website went into spasms and died in front of their screen. Would we seek protection for our children and for the general public from such a website from internet browser companies, ISPs and the government? Yes we would. This is an extreme example but it illustrates a point. You can say the same thing about websites that prey on children, or the elderly.
I'm not advocating for the banning of pornography altogether. I am making the simple proposition that it be better regulated. People who distribute porn know full well that their content is seen by minors. Having a child check a box that says that they are over 18 is not good enough. If I hadn't seen porn as a minor, I might have had a better chance of avoiding the extremely negative impacts that it can carry with it. Don't believe me? Visit a support page like r/NoFap and read the hundreds of thousands of stories there.
I'm not going to touch any of the other subjects you raised because I'm not arguing for any of the things you listed.
>people are killing themselves because of instagram
Literally every social issue on the web for the last 20 years follows this one simple formula:
> X causes Y. Yes it sounds stupid, but read this long winded reasoning or spend the next 70 hours of your life going down my trail of studies to back this up
And nobody actually invests their lives in rebuking them, and they get bored and stop talking about it 5 years later.
Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though. You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people. The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.
> Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though.
I didn't say it did.
> You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people.
I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about minors. Protecting children from products that require an adult brain to ascertain harm is a positive function of government.
> The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.
This is not about morality. Please don't read intentions where there are none.
I don't know why you keep insisting that this is a moral appeal. This is public health.
1 - mandate disclaimers in front of all videos describing the possible negative effects of porn (there are concrete, well-studied effects). cigarettes and tobacco have the same mandates and they do have an overall positive effect on educating the public
2 - hold video hosting sites liable if content is shown to minors. there is a reason why a bar can get closed down or a gas station attendee can lose his or her job if alcohol and tobacco is served to minors. the same rules need to apply for sexually explicit material that is turbocharged to reach children
> 1 - mandate disclaimers in front of all videos describing the possible negative effects of porn
Why would you think this will work? My parents, school, etc already gave you a million false warnings about porn and yet I looked at it. Did that even work for smoking? I think smoking only stopped once vape replaced it. Now I have to skip the intro logo as well as some stupid disclaimer, and producers have to waste more of their time on legal checkboxes, great.
> 2 - hold video hosting sites liable if content is shown to minors.
That's not a concrete plan. Do we need photo ID here? Some experimental crypto to disclose your government certified age to the website so it can decide not to kick you off? What about a forum where anyone can post any image? Does the forum have to be legally liable to block minors if it has no rule against porn?
The internet worked perfect in 2000. I got my porn when I was 13 and had no problem. There was not a single complaint aside from corporate scum trying to enforce DMCA crap (the multi billion dollar company was complaining, nobody else). Only when all you American idiots came in 2010 from faceberg all these pretend social problems started existing. The internet is literally just data transmission and this act could not be more harmless if you wanted it to be. Quite literally, the internet is the most harmless technology in existence. It cannot give you any disease, etc. It costs nothing, etc. What we are seeing here is the American art of being a professional victim. One should start by observing that almost every single complaint about the internet starts with "I read some text and now I am offended".
I envision the internet as community run, and free. The current internet is all obsolete garbage. The problem is, on this new internet we wont actually be able to make it because everything will be illegal by then. It will be illegal to run point to point to your neighbour because of some stupid porno law that has absolutely nothing to do with your application.
> the social interactions they provide are every bit as addictive.
I'm not familiar with actual research in this space, but i would imagine that its similarly addictive to being with friends IRL?
(To me) social media is a great tool to connect with friends and stay present even after we move away and work and pandemic quarantine. Its a suppliment for IRL relationships. I used to live with friends in college, and i used to go out and get food or drinks or whatever almost daily to get my "fix" of socialization.
Are social networks really that different? I recognize that some (teen girl?) people might wish they looked like a supermodel on social media or get jealousy of the lives of influences, but is that different from old magazine and movie stars? Is the mixture of "social" and "influences" to one news feed detrimental? Is there more exposure? What makes social networking more "addictive" (and therefore dangerous) than actual socialization?
Its true that social media is addictive, and also that companies intentionally design it to be so, but everyone bears some responsibility on that - from the companies, to the users, to the engineers working on it, to online authors referencing it/promoting it, etc, etc. So even if we argue about who gets what percentage of blame, it doesn't really change anything. We may convince 10-20 people in the comments section, but thats not really a solution. We need to contribute on a social media de-addiction guide or something.. :)
Right, no one is forcing anyone to use their services. It is only that they create an environment, which is actively damaging other "players" in the environment:
If you are not using it, uninformed people will laugh about you (peer pressure, network effect). Furthermore, because so many people use FB, many people will use FB to organize events, which one does not even know about, because of not being on FB. In the end, they will spin it, because they do not know better themselves, that it is you, who isolated yourself from the rest of "society".
I have experienced it many times. I have missed out on probably many things over time. Yet I refuse to be a part of FB and stuff like that. However, I am only one person. The peer pressure probably works on most people, because most are not as informed about FB (and Instagram and whatever else they own) and what it does, as the crowd on HN is for example. That means, that the argument of "no one is forcing anyone" is a bad one, because you would need to add "but they will make your life worse, if you do not join!". It is kind of an extortion, which an uninformed society unknowingly is excerting on the individual, put in motion by dark patterns, privacy-hostility and bad practices on the side of FB.
Their business model is poisoning the well of society, and strip-mining its value by breaking the bonds that hold it together.
The very best that can be concluded about it's entire leadership is that they entirely lack any hint of moral compass or sense of responsibility to the society from which they extract their wealth.
The more I observe their behavior, the more it looks like worse conclusions are supported by the data.
Just stop justifying things on technical bases. It is what FB is doing the the top post above
I don't get how you can end up in this line of thought? Can you ask these same questions about the abusers of opioids? Or Tobacco? Don't you have any bad habits you have difficulty shaking off?
Genuinely surprised.
I'm only speculating, but if "everyone's on instagram", maybe people don't want to be left out?
They may know that it's bad for you, just as I expect most smokers to know smoking is bad for you.
But the "badness" isn't direct, it grows, and they could think "maybe I'll be able to control it / I can quit whenever I want", whereas if you don't follow current trends (or whatever it is people follow on instagram), you're left out immediately.
Of course, by the time you realize you can't quit, it's already too late.
There's an old joke:
When you owe the bank a million dollars, it's your problem.
When you owe them a billion dollars, it's their problem.
(these numbers likely need adjustment for inflation...)
If FB/Instagram use is damaging a substantial percentage of your population, it's your problem, regardless of whatever moral frame you decide to put around it.
The difference is scope. On a personal level, yes, individuals should stop using Instagram if it's harming them. When we're discussing systems thinking and trying to understand trends that affect entire states, entire nations, or the whole world, we look at the impact of systemic interventions.
Unless telling people to take responsibility for themselves is an effective systemic intervention (it might be!) then it's not very useful, except as a PR strategy to deflect blame from Facebook.
From the article it seems that young girls know about the toxicity in the application, why they keep using it? if their parents are aware too, why do they let their daughters use it?