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The current discourse seems to be based mainly on insinuations that FB/IG actually harms people on the basis of a small fraction of struggling kids reporting th

The current discourse seems to be based mainly on insinuations that FB/IG actually harms people on the basis of a small fraction of struggling kids reporting that they feel worse when they look at Instagram. But, would anyone have predicted otherwise? That literally no teen who reports suicidal ideation would attribute their issues in part to what they see on social media? Or perhaps that's a strawman -- would we not have bothered with this discourse if the reported fraction of teens reporting suicidal ideation who cited Instagram were 2% instead of 6%? 1%? Given how many and how much young people use Instagram, what fraction there would represent "no effect size", where you can't get away with insinuating that Instagram has any causal impact on mood compared to any other activity that kids could be doing? It's probably not 0, right?

sp332 5y ago
Facebook funded research into how their products affect people's well-being. The studies showed a negative impact, so FB decided to bury the reports and then when they leaked, they argued that the research wasn't very good. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/facebook-files-internal-research-harms/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/faceboo... https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.fb.com%2Fnews%2F2021%2F09%2Fresearch-teen-well-being-and-instagram%2F https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.f...
- convexfunction 5y ago
  Did the studies show a negative impact in any meaningful sense, though? "Some teens report that Instagram contributes to or triggers to mental health issues" is my understanding of the most supposedly-damning finding; I understand why this can be turned into a high-engagement news story with (at best) genuine ignorance on the part of journalist and editor about how hard it is to defensibly turn survey results into interesting causal psychological claims or (at worst) mild deception, but I really don't think it tells us much about whether a world with any plausibly different Instagram or no Instagram at all would have less extreme or less frequent mental health issues in teens overall, or even in many of the specific people who report these problems. I don't think declining to publicize the results of an internal study that will be predictably grossly over-interpreted by media and therefore by the public is actually wrong, and I read the FB response you posted an archive link to as saying "this research has been grossly and selectively over-interpreted", not "this research isn't very good".
- passivate 5y ago
  Your link says "This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram" I think its a bit of a stretch to consider this as research.

sp332 5y ago

Facebook funded research into how their products affect people's well-being. The studies showed a negative impact, so FB decided to bury the reports and then when they leaked, they argued that the research wasn't very good. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/facebook-files-internal-research-harms/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/faceboo... https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.fb.com%2Fnews%2F2021%2F09%2Fresearch-teen-well-being-and-instagram%2F https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.f...

convexfunction 5y ago
Did the studies show a negative impact in any meaningful sense, though? "Some teens report that Instagram contributes to or triggers to mental health issues" is my understanding of the most supposedly-damning finding; I understand why this can be turned into a high-engagement news story with (at best) genuine ignorance on the part of journalist and editor about how hard it is to defensibly turn survey results into interesting causal psychological claims or (at worst) mild deception, but I really don't think it tells us much about whether a world with any plausibly different Instagram or no Instagram at all would have less extreme or less frequent mental health issues in teens overall, or even in many of the specific people who report these problems. I don't think declining to publicize the results of an internal study that will be predictably grossly over-interpreted by media and therefore by the public is actually wrong, and I read the FB response you posted an archive link to as saying "this research has been grossly and selectively over-interpreted", not "this research isn't very good".
passivate 5y ago
Your link says "This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram" I think its a bit of a stretch to consider this as research.