I personally deleted my account but what is it about Facebook that is worse than say Twitter (also deleted) ? Twitter was a big bag of toxicity. Not saying it wasn't interested, tons of interesting people to follow; but the discussions were often rude, racist and hateful. And it poses the same problem of teens following supermodels and what not. What I'm saying is this is about social media in general, not about Facebook which just happens to be the (currently) number 1 platform.

That is not what the data researchers currently employed by Facebook said, if you read the article.

"They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others."

"'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."

So I suspect that their understanding of the problem is better than yours, and that there is something about Instagram that makes it worse than generic social media.

Twitter is not algorithmically pushing supermodel photos to teenage girls. The target demographics are completely different from Instagram.

You are correct however, that Twitter is also toxic; like all social media.

The more basic issue seems to be that (many) people are toxic. If not always, to everyone, at least some of the time, towards some other people.

The problem with social media, then, is that it allows -- indeed encourages, because "engagement" -- all that toxicity to spread so much more widely and rapidly than ever before.

We could argue about "general/basic problems" all day.

This post is about FB suppressing their own research, which showed that Instagram and its algorithm are toxic to teenage girls.

> We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,”

> Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,”

> “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

You're assuming people have morals to appeal to - most don't. When everyone is connected to everyone else the asshole always prevail. The solution is to sever the connections.

One would dare say that an overwhelming majority of people does have morals.

But a very small minority that doesn't have morals, is causing the illusion that it's most people that don't have them.

Other people not sharing your values is not the same as them not having morals at all.

[citation needed]

I don't know many such morally-absent folks. Perhaps the perverse incentives in our system mean a bunch of CEOs are quite sociopathic, but on the whole, people seem rather good intentioned to me. The internet certainly serves as a platform for many that would be otherwise shunned IRL, but I don't think they're the general majority...just the majority that decide to voice their opinions. The rest aren't even paying attention - only a small fraction of people have a Twitter account, for example.

Even reddit, which can be anonymous, is filled with good discourse, assuming you avoid certain subreddits, and sort by top. Moderation goes a long way to mimicking our more natural IRL tendencies to turn down the assholes. Twitter and Instagram generally lack those tools, so the assholes can be louder and _seem_ more prominent than they are.