Reply to WSJ: Facebook knows Instagram is harmful to many young users

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Reply to "WSJ: Facebook knows Instagram is harmful to many young users—especially teen girls"

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[quote=Anonymous]It's also harmful to adults.

Regarding the comparisons to alcohol or smoking, the problem is that the potential harms are not disclosed. Imagine if alcohol or cigarettes were marketed directly to teenagers as a cool, fun thing to do, with disclose to those teens (or their parents) that these substances are very dangerous and could kill them or cause longterm health problems? Actually, you don't have to imagine because that's how it used to be, until as a society we realized how dangerous that was and decided to regulate how these things were marketed and restrict their access to underage children.

I'm a full grown adult and social media was such a negative influence in my life, on my relationships, and on my mental health that I had to treat it the way an alcoholic treats alcohol. My social media use was out of control and was either a major contributing cause, or THE cause, of a serious depressive episode that involved suicidal thoughts. Of course this isn't the same for everyone, just as not everyone who drinks alcohol becomes an alcoholic. But the risks are right there and yet we don't treat them as a serious threat to children or adults, because we have this very outdated view that social media is "just a platform" and we ignore how these apps deploy methods designed to addict users in a negative way.

If Facebook actually cared about the mental well being of users, they would do things like:

- Give users more transparent control of how their posts or comments appear in other user's newsfeeds
- Make likes and even many comments private info that only a user can see (so there would be no comparison of likes and comments)
- Never disclose user activities to other users as a rule (like the way Instagram will disclose that another user has viewed your stories)
- Have safeguards in place that will remind users when they've been on the app for a long time or engaging in addictive behavior like checking multiple times in an hour, or looking at the same user profiles over and over. Even a pop up that says stuff like "You've checked this profile 5x today -- are you sure you want to check again?" would go a long way towards making users more aware of how they use the apps and the impact it's having on their mental health.

They don't want to do this because this addictive, obsessive behavior, rooted in low self esteem and a desire to be liked, is their bread and butter. It what gets and keeps people hooked, which is necessary for them to profit off of user info and advertising. These companies are evil, much more so than alcohol and tobacco companies even when they used to lie about the negative impacts of their products, because at least it was always clear what the product was. Facebook has successfully convinced people that the product is the platform when in reality the product is the user.[/quote]

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