Instanorexia
The Catholic church knew and did it anyway, Facebook knew and did it anyway.
Facebook’s internal research found that Instagram, which it acquired in 2012 for $1 billion, makes eating disorders and thoughts of suicide worse in teenage girls, whistleblower Frances Haugen said in a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday.
Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook, gathered internal documents as she grew frustrated by the company’s prioritization of growth and user engagement over its negative impacts, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to internal studies retrieved by Haugen, Facebook found that 13.5% of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse, and 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse.
Well, look at it this way: Instagram is just one of many. Women and girls are constantly bombarded by images and videos and marketing that tell them how fabulous they’re supposed to look and how disgusting they are if they don’t look fabulous in that correct way.
“And what’s super tragic is Facebook’s own research says as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed. It actually makes them use the app more,” Haugen said. “They end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more.”
And from Facebook’s point of view the key bit there is not “hate their bodies more and more” but “use the app more.” Which one puts more money in Facebook’s pocket? There you go.
Have I said Facebook is a plague lately? Facebook is a plague.
Get out while you can, bankrupt the bastards.
“It’s all about the Benjamins”
If only it wasn’t for the Pusheen Messenger stickers…
I’m on Facebook because the vast majority of my communication with friends and family is made via Facebook. If it weren’t for that, I might consider leaving, but that’s no small thing.
Yep, same here.
And me. My social life is 90% conducted on Facebook and Messenger (the rest is interacting with those members of my family I live with, and Skype for those I don’t), and was that way even before the pandemic. It has been a mental health lifeline for those of us who find in-person socialising extremely difficult; having unpredictable chronic conditions means that making arrangements to meet up is fraught with the risk of last-minute cancellations. People just stop inviting you after a while. But on Facebook, no-one can tell I’m having a bad day.
I guess I’m sort of lucky for neither having, nor wanting, much of a social life. I can avoid Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, etc etc etc. I am not on any of the social media platforms, unless you count Library Thing, and since I just manage my enormous book collection there and don’t engage in chats, etc, I guess that’s not much of a social media either.
I actually found a lot of relief during the pandemic because I suffer from anxiety around people. Which makes it bad being a teacher, I guess. I go home so exhausted I can barely function some nights, and that didn’t happen while I was working from home.
Let me be absolutely clear about this: it is a 100% certainty that Facebook and its related companies also profiled those girls, categorised them as vulnerable in various ways and sold that information to anyone who asked.
Supergiant global company. Profiling vulnerable girls. Selling details of their vulnerabilities to all comers.