<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/28/contrary-to-popular-opinion-most-teens-get-real-value-out-of-social-media/>
"There’s this narrative out there that “it has been decided” that social media
is “bad for children” and that it is such a big danger that “regulation is
needed.” A few months ago, we wrote about a Berkeley professor who claimed that
this was settled and that there was “no longer any question as to the nature of
the harm to children around the globe.” In that post we went through all of the
linked research showing it proved nothing of the sort.
For example, lots of people rely on the
reporting around the Frances Haugen
leaks from inside Facebook to argue that “Facebook knew” that Instagram causes
“body image issues” for children (and then most people leapt to the belief that
the company then ignored and downplayed that finding). But, as we noted, the
actual study told a very, very different story. As we pointed out at the time,
the study was an attempt to do the right thing and understand if social media
like Facebook was actually causing negative self-images among teenagers, and
the study found that for the most part, the answer was
absolutely not.
It looked at 12 different potential issues, and surveyed teenaged boys and
girls, and found that in 23 out of 24 categories, social media had little to no
negative impact, and quite frequently a mostly
positive impact. The
only
issue where the “negative impact” outweighed the “positive impact” was on “body
image issues” for teenaged girls, and even then it was less than one-third of
the teen girls who said that it made it worse for them. And the whole point of
the study was to find out what areas were problematic, and which areas could be
improved upon. But, again, in
every other area, “made it better” far
outranked “made it worse.”
Of course, you might question whether or not you can believe Facebook’s own
research. But now the Pew Research Center, whose work tends to be impeccable,
has released a study also highlighting how social media generally seems to be
making teenagers’ lives better, not worse."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
