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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]you all seem to think you just invented everything. You think that before this everyone just felt great about themselves and there were no anorexic girls? We had Cosmo, and Seventeen and Vogue and MTV to give us unrealistic images. Instagram and Facebook didn't invent it and aren't the cause of it. The problem is women and the way in which we have done our part to perpetuate this misogyny via self loathing.

All the things that these girls are worried about are things that are judged and enforced and reinforced almost primarily and most harshly by other women. Most men don't care if you look exactly like JLo. They don't care what you wear and if your shoes are cute. THey don't care if your brows are on point. They don't care about visible panty lines. They do not see us through the same lenses as we see ourselves and each other. So we can blame Instagram we can blame the patriarchy but really the problem is ours to fix. Doesn't matter how we got here, this is where we are. Women and only women can fix this. [/quote]

I agree with a lot this, but social media is not the same as MTV and teen magazines. We didn’t carry those things around in our pockets all day, feeling them vibrate every time something new happened. Yes, the magazines’ images and messaging were problematic, but there’s a difference between thumbing through something that’s printed 12 times a year and being flooded with a constant barrage of that stuff, day and night. Nobody was literally addicted to MTV or Cosmo. We had the mental space to think about other things during the day, and the other stuff was downtime entertainment.
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You are correct but this is something that affects everyone who uses it. I hate the idea that we are putting out teen girls as damsels being ruined by our culture and again taking the onus off the real responsible party which is the larger culture and social order that is maintained by women themselves a la the Marthas in Handmaids Tale. So even if we shut off Instagram the whole seeing the value and ranking the worth of a woman by her appearance isn’t going anywhere. [/quote]

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