Instagram: Oxycontin online from Facebook?


Facebook search leak shows that the company’s Instagram platform is “toxic” to teens, especially girls. Now what?

Peddling envy: the only mortal sin that gives no pleasure

The research disclosed appears in “The Facebook files”, a work in several parts the Wall Street newspaper exhibit on Facebook.

At some level, the information should come as no surprise. Research generally available on social media describe its effects similar to those of junk food. It provides insufficient nutrition, replaces healthier options, and contains positively harmful ingredients.

You will covet

Of the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, anger, lust, gluttony, laziness and envy), only envy provides no pleasure, even fleeting.

The anxiety reported among young Instagram users (especially girls) stems from a feeling of inadequacy. Young people look at celebrity and peer accounts and say to themselves, “They are so much more beautiful. Thinner, more buff. They are so much richer, more prosperous and popular.

As a human weakness, the longing for what others have dates back to the beginning, to Eve’s temptation and Cain’s jealousy.

More recently, baby boomers and Generation X may recall Dr. Seuss’ story of a young bird named Gertrude McFuzz (“who had the smallest solid tail ever”) and how she envied Lolla Lee Lou’s double-feathered back.

What would Dr. Seuss have done with the buttock implants?

Oxycontin online

As with alcohol, some social media users may have a tendency to addiction.

Science plays a role. Products and services can be designed for maximum appeal and intensity of effect. For example, many people might be able to chew coca leaves from time to time. But how many people can snort cocaine or smoke crack cocaine?

This is where the power of social media platform and data science meet. Cognitive biases, weaknesses, blind spots and predilections can be analyzed and exploited at the individual level. The algorithms that sell us things know us better than we do.

Facebook’s fight for the future

Ultimately, of course, it all comes down to the money.

According to the Wall Street newspaper, 40% of Instagram users are 22 or younger. American teens spend an average of 50% more time on Instagram than on Facebook.

Looking to the future, Facebook considered rolling out a version of Instagram targeting kids 12 and under (as if many of those kids weren’t already on Instagram).

What to do about the harmful consequences of Instagram

Facebook’s Instagram search leak is simply telling Facebook that “you know we know you know.”

Many young people (and adults) do harmful things. Some are legal. Some are not.

Facebook is said to have modified Instagram to reduce the harmful effects. The efforts include hiding “likes” and allowing users to adjust their own photos. Some adjustments made matters worse. Ultimately, Coke will sell Coke. McDonald’s will sell fast food. And Facebook will push Instagram.

So what to do?

The Chinese government believes in the hammer. This government recently banned those under 18 play video games from Monday to Thursday, with one hour per day authorized between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Fridays, weekends and holidays. It would appear that all online video games must log into an “anti-addiction” system with all users registering under their real name, as shown on a government-issued ID.

The US government is unlikely to use or use such a hammer on social media. Unlike oxycontin, neither social media, nor soda, nor fast food leaves a direct count of the body.

Still, there may be reasons to be optimistic.

Over time, some harmful behaviors in young people change from cool to uncool to lame. From 1991 to 2017, for example, smoking rates among young people fell 68%, from 27.5% in 1991 to 8.8%. The percentage of adolescents who drink and drive fallen 54% over the past 30 years.

What will make Instagram uncool, if not lame? The safest tactic is its embrace by parents and grandparents, which has probably caused young people to quit Facebook.

As a back-up, we can encourage young people to discuss why they frequent a platform that makes them feel lousy, or at least use it in a way that does.

Plus, young people have a genius for creative insult. Who knows? Maybe a few viral, derogatory terms for Instagram influencers and heavy users will turn the tide.

# the goodwill win