Facebook-owned Instagram is the new Big Tobacco (according to one U.S. Senator). Mark Zuckerberg and staff know it, but will not release the data from their own internal studies that show a correlation between teen Instagram use and body shame, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
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28 replies on “New Big Tobacco: Hidden Internal Instagram Studies Show Teen Depression, Suicidal Thoughts”
Looks like someone up there on Crapitol Hill watched this little gem. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/30/senators-say-facebook-used-big-tobacco-playbook-to-exploit-kids.html
Well done again Guys.
Typical of leftists “…for the children” claim, YOU do “for” while we do “TO” the children,
Men without chests. (and apparently girls as well).”We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful…”
We have been raising our kids to think that boys and girls are the same, that life is and always will be fair; that everyone is special. then we pump their eyes full of crap that says you not this special if you don’t look like this. Then wonder why little Jane can’t cope. We never taught her to cope with anything! Our kids are kept in a bubble their whole lives except on anti-social media, and we are not there to help teach them.
Use algorigthms to steer teenagers in “the right direction”?
Well, they do it with politics. Why not something more people agree on?
What if Instagram nudged in a virtuous way? Only possible from those with virtue. Turns out, a culture that doesn’t value life, doesn’t value life.
So Scott, do you think those Facebook employees who are worried about their bonuses are just as worried about their souls. Methinks not.
I don’t remember; was that an SNL skit that Bill referenced during the show? (and that got thumbnailed for the vid)
Does anyone have a link? My googol-fu is weak on this one. Can’t find it…
You should use duckduckgo for your search engine. Not only is it safer it finds lots of sites one wouldn’t always find using google.
I do, which is why I spelled googol the way I did. But I couldn’t figure out the right combination of keywords to come up with the right clip. :.-(
My -fu has abandoned me this day.
It is. Martin Short as a tobacco exec. I recall it being funny but who knows if it translates across a couple of decades.
Kids learn. Whether they want to or not, whether they’re aware of it or not, whether what they learn is beneficial or not. They have a great big human brain, the largest and most complex thinking machine in the known universe, it’s constantly growing and it is hungry all the time.
This is a survival trait. The faster a kid learns what he needs to know the more likely he will be to survive. A four year-old might dash out into traffic where a seven year-old knows not to do that. If he learns the right things and applies them he won’t just survive, he’ll thrive. You have to teach kids constantly not to do things like dash out into traffic and some of the things you need to teach them are not so obvious as that.
The current era is known as “The Information Age” and it is marvelous in many aspects. I used to spend days combing through card catalogs and weeks waiting for needed information to wend its way through inter-library exchanges and mail-order. I had to pay to learn what I can learn today for free and access in mere seconds. It’s an amazing thing.
It’s also a very dangerous thing because information and information flow is extremely powerful without that power being completely obvious. You don’t get a blister on your finger from touching a phone screen displaying Instagram like you do from a hot stove. The dangers are more insidious and unobvious.
“Information” doesn’t mean and is not restricted to good, accurate, applicable, actionable information. There are all sorts of information available now. It’s not just affecting kids. There are adults that having been exposed to falsehood, misdirection or outright lies who choose to believe things like: The Earth is flat. Space aliens walk among us in disguise and will probe your butt if you aren’t aware of them. That there are reptilians masquerading as people controlling the world. That high bypass turbofan condensation trails are actually “chemtrails” being applied by mysterious entities for purposes ranging from mind control to combatting global warming. That the world is hollow and there’s a habitable inverted globe secretly concealed from us existing below our feet. That Nazis escaped from Germany at the end of WWII and are thriving in a secret base in Antarctica where they plot to rule the world. That the three buildings of the World Trade Center and the damage to the Pentagon was actually a plot to move the US population in a direction our government wanted it to go by secret, unseen forces in that government. Etc.
Some of those very people are here and members of this website. The only way to avoid being a victim of misinformation is to use real information and have the ability to sort out which is which. It’s necessary to use reason, logic and a good basic education to tell the difference. Almost all misinformation and misdirection can be exposed with sufficient effort and a good grasp of scientific principles but … As the old saying goes “Keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out.”.
Not everyone can do that successfully, though most mature adults do a pretty good job of that.
Kids don’t.
Kids can’t sort what they learn very well. To a kid, everything is urgent, vital, and socially significant. Also a survival trait. I.E. by the time you see a lion it’s too late to run and vital that you have your social unit around you to deal with it. Or you’re lion chow. Always best to err on the side of caution and stay in the good graces of your social unit so they don’t ignore you and the lion that’s picked you out for lunch.
This is the root of what we call “peer pressure” and although it doesn’t work on some adults as well as it ought it works on kids indiscriminately well.
Where it applies to kids, it can be a beneficial thing or not. When adults pay attention to what their children are doing and the pressures other kids exert on them then parents can have a very positive influence. It’s not the parents job to protect the kid by removing all the lions, it’s the parents job to teach the kid how to deal with lions when they show up. But they have to make the effort. Because …
Out there in the darkness beyond cave and campfire there are kid-eating predators. That hasn’t really changed; different predators, same result — Lost kids.
If you let the predators into your cave and invite them to sit at your campfire then you shouldn’t be surprised when they eat your kid.
Scott: Don’t Scott Ott, Stephen Green and Bill Whittle create *260* new episodes of Right Angle each year?
I was told there would be no math.
The problem with those of you who were shipped left at entrance to PSU (as opposed to those who went right to engineering) is that you think that 52 x 5 is math. Not a character flaw, just a lack of experience with Mathematics.
All of what you say is true.
So … are you claiming that these fine gentlemen are not allowed to take a few weeks each year for their individual pursuits? Wow! You are a harsh task master. 😉
Well, now that they have super sub Zo, vacations will abound.
I was afraid that one day Bill would take off on a Tuesday and we would be subjected to that AK guy.
Spot-on guys! Now we just need some good trial lawyers, say John Sokolof or Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe. Maybe the way to get to the evil of our current social media is through lawsuits? Here’s a recent example locally: The Facebook app “Nextdoor” which is supposed to link people in their neighborhoods. One neighbor asked the question yesterday asking their neighbors who had been vaccinated (she has been vaccinated) whether anyone else had experienced symptoms of the flu. I think she was going on to ask if they had been able to be tested for Covid, or whatever she was asking. That notification of her question on Nextdoor was posted at 3:28 this morning in my email. It was also posted as the “Top Post” at around 11:30 last night with multiple comments to her post. By 6:00 this morning when I looked at my email while eating breakfast, I could not reach that post no matter how I tried. Finally I received the notice that that particular post had been removed. So…the propaganda media and social propaganda media combine to march us down to their socialist utopian future…where even the Zuck will have his property confiscated by his “betters”.
+1 for Car Talk reference!
I don’t believe that this is a problem that either can or must be solved by greedy corporate bastards and their money-grubbing shills. This is a failure of the culture that has successfully devalued the family to the point that parents either don’t exist or refuse to take responsibility for their children.
As a parent, I must ask, ” Do you really want some faceless bureaucrat or CEO determining how to protect your kids from their own whims and desires?”
We have been in a search for a new Youth Pastor at church (that seems to be coming to a conclusion) and one of the biggest topics is use of social media and how to protect young people from its bad side while using what good there might be. (FTR – I don’t use FB/Twitter/IG/Snapchat etc. I have accounts on two of those that are there strictly if someone that I know tells me they posted some family photos or such. I think it is all awful)
Given the conversations, I can see a swing in the pendulum coming, but there will just be a next thing to take the place of the current atrocities.
I guess one needs to be of a certain age to understand who Bill was channeling; back from when SNL was still funny and would poke fun at everybody.
Pretty good job, Bill.
Sadly, nobody outside of Gen X will get the great Martin Thurm references
Bill’s dead on about he gender thing. Here’s my satirical take on it in the Great Reset Gazette edition from April this year.
I have a bad feeling that a few minutes of online searching will find a serious article supporting your headline
Davey, did you do that satirical parody? If you did, kudos! I’m impressed with your skill👍
Many thanks Lynda, yup, it’s my work. Back before Parler got eviscerated I started doing the Great Reset Gazette as an ongoing thing, I think that might the last one I did. Here’s another one about the need to check stories out. It rather fizzled as Parler is a mere shadow of its pre-shutdown self, but I may start producing it again. Although, as we’ve all said before, the gap between satire and what’s actually happening gets thinner day by day.
That’s a good one, too. You would be right at home writing for the Babylon Bee. I hope you will keep producing these satire/parody pieces and share them here. Really good satire is so close to the real thing one has to be pretty sharp to catch it. I’ve been fooled a few times by Bee headlines.