{"id":1417,"date":"2021-11-25T00:02:06","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T23:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/25\/the-thousands-of-vulnerable-people-harmed-by-facebook-and-instagram-are-lost-in-metas-average-user-data-the-conversation-us\/"},"modified":"2021-11-25T00:02:06","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T23:02:06","slug":"the-thousands-of-vulnerable-people-harmed-by-facebook-and-instagram-are-lost-in-metas-average-user-data-the-conversation-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/25\/the-thousands-of-vulnerable-people-harmed-by-facebook-and-instagram-are-lost-in-metas-average-user-data-the-conversation-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The thousands of vulnerable people harmed by Facebook and Instagram are lost in Meta&#039;s &#039;average user&#039; data &#8211; The Conversation US"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>       Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington     <br \/><span>Joseph Bak-Coleman receives funding from the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington eScience Institute, and the Knight Foundation. <\/span><br \/><a class=\"logo\" href=\"\/institutions\/university-of-washington-699\"><picture><source srcset=\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/partners\/878\/logos\/logo-1470265079.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=170&amp;h=170\" media=\"(min-width:600px)\"><\/source><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"University of Washington\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAD\/ACwAAAAAAQABAAACADs%3D\" \/><\/picture><\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/university-of-washington-699\">University of Washington<\/a> provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.<br \/><a href=\"\/us\/partners\">View all partners<\/a><br \/>Fall 2021 has been filled with a steady stream of media coverage arguing that Meta\u2019s Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram social media platforms pose a threat to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739\">users\u2019 mental health<\/a> and well-being, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/tech-news\/facebook-knew-radicalized-users-rcna3581\">radicalize<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-60-minutes-polarizing-divisive-content\/\">polarize<\/a> users and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-documents-misinformation-spread\/\">spread misinformation<\/a>. <br \/>Are these technologies \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/investor.fb.com\/investor-news\/press-release-details\/2021\/Facebook-Reports-Third-Quarter-2021-Results\/default.aspx\">embraced by billions<\/a> \u2013 killing people and eroding democracy? Or is this just another moral panic? <br \/>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2021\/09\/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong\/\">Meta\u2019s PR team<\/a> and a handful of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/10\/opinion\/instagram-facebook-mental-health-study.html\">contrarian academics<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/13\/opinion\/instagram-teenagers.html\">journalists<\/a>, there is evidence that social media does not cause harm and the overall picture is unclear. They cite apparently conflicting studies, imperfect access to data and the difficulty of establishing causality to support this position.<br \/>Some of these researchers have surveyed social media users and found that social media use appears to have at most <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.1902058116\">minor negative consequences<\/a> on individuals. These results seem inconsistent with years of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/healthiest-communities\/articles\/2019-09-12\/social-media-use-may-increase-teens-risk-of-mental-health-issues\">journalistic reporting<\/a>, Meta\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-facebook-files-11631713039\">leaked internal data<\/a>, common sense intuition and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/05\/technology\/teenage-girls-instagram.html\">people\u2019s lived experience<\/a>.<br \/>Teens struggle with self-esteem, and it doesn\u2019t seem far-fetched to suggest that browsing Instagram could make that worse. Similarly, it\u2019s hard to imagine so many people refusing to get vaccinated, becoming hyperpartisan or succumbing to conspiracy theories in the days before social media.<br \/>So who is right? As a researcher who <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=Y5000VQAAAAJ&amp;hl=en\">studies collective behavior<\/a>, I see no conflict between the research (methodological quibbles aside), leaks and people\u2019s intuition. Social media can have catastrophic effects, even if the average user only experiences minimal consequences.<br \/>To see how this works, consider a world in which Instagram has a rich-get-richer and poor-get-poorer effect on the well-being of users. A majority, those already doing well to begin with, find Instagram provides social affirmation and helps them stay connected to friends. A minority, those who are struggling with depression and loneliness, see these posts and wind up feeling worse. <br \/>If you average them together in a study, you might not see much of a change over time. This could explain why findings from surveys and panels are able to claim minimal impact on average. More generally, small groups in a larger sample have a hard time changing the average.<br \/>Yet if we zoom in on the most at-risk people, many of them may have moved from occasionally sad to mildly depressed or from mildly depressed to dangerously so. This is precisely what Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen reported in her congressional testimony: Instagram creates a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2021\/oct\/12\/instagram-eating-disorders-teen-girls-parents\">downward spiraling feedback loop<\/a> among the most vulnerable teens.<br \/>The inability of this type of research to capture the smaller but still significant numbers of people at risk \u2013 the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statisticshowto.com\/upper-tail-and-lower-tail\/\">tail of the distribution<\/a> \u2013 is made worse by the need to measure a range of human experiences in discrete increments. When people rate their well-being from a low point of one to a high point of five, \u201cone\u201d can mean anything from breaking up with a partner who they weren\u2019t that into in the first place to urgently needing crisis intervention to stay alive. These nuances are buried in the context of population averages. <br \/>The tendency to ignore harm on the margins isn\u2019t unique to mental health or even the consequences of social media. Allowing the bulk of experience to obscure the fate of smaller groups is a common mistake, and I\u2019d argue that these are often the people society should be most concerned about. <br \/>It can also be <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/465686a\">a pernicious tactic<\/a>. Tobacco companies and scientists alike once argued that premature death among some smokers was not a serious concern because most people who have smoked a cigarette do not die of <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/doubt-is-their-product-9780195300673?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;\">lung cancer<\/a>. <br \/>Pharmaceutical companies have defended their aggressive marketing tactics by claiming that the vast majority of people treated with opioids <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2017\/6\/7\/15724054\/opioid-epidemic-lawsuits-purdue-oxycontin\">get relief from pain without dying of an overdose<\/a>. In doing so, they\u2019ve swapped the vulnerable for the average and steered the conversation toward benefits, often measured in a way that obscures the very real damage to a minority \u2013 but still substantial \u2013 group of people.<br \/>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/us\/newsletters\/science-editors-picks-71\/?utm_source=TCUS&amp;utm_medium=inline-link&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter-text&amp;utm_content=science-best\">Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s science newsletter<\/a>.]<br \/>The lack of harm to many is not inconsistent with severe harm caused to a few. With most of the world now using some form of social media, I believe it\u2019s important to listen to the voices of concerned parents and struggling teenagers when they point to Instagram as a source of distress. Similarly, it\u2019s important to acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic has been prolonged because <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1136\/bmjgh-2020-004206\">misinformation on social media has made some people afraid<\/a> to take a safe and effective vaccine. These lived experiences are important pieces of evidence about the harm caused by social media.<br \/>Establishing causality from observational data is challenging, so challenging that progress on this front garnered the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/economic-sciences\/2021\/popular-information\/\">2021 Nobel in economics<\/a>. And social scientists are not well positioned to run randomized controlled trials to definitively establish causality, particularly for social media platform design choices such as altering how content is filtered and displayed. <br \/>But Meta is. The company has petabytes of data on human behavior, many social scientists on its payroll and the ability to run randomized control trials in parallel with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2014\/jun\/29\/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds\">millions of users<\/a>. They run such experiments all the time to understand how best to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2021\/10\/26\/facebook-angry-emoji-algorithm\/\">capture users\u2019 attention<\/a>, down to every button\u2019s color, shape and size. <br \/>Meta could come forward with irrefutable and transparent evidence that their products are harmless, even to the vulnerable, if it exists. Has the company chosen not to run such experiments or has it run them and decided not to share the results? <br \/>Either way, Meta\u2019s decision to instead release and emphasize data about average effects is telling.<br \/>     Write an article and join a growing community of more than 137,300 academics and researchers from 4,212 institutions.   <br \/>     <a class=\"button\" href=\"\/become-an-author\">Register now<\/a>   <br \/>       <span>Copyright &copy; 2010\u20132021<\/span><span class=\"comma\">, <\/span><span><a href=\"\/us\/who-we-are\">The Conversation US, Inc.<\/a><\/span>     <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-thousands-of-vulnerable-people-harmed-by-facebook-and-instagram-are-lost-in-metas-average-user-data-172119\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington Joseph Bak-Coleman receives funding from the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington eScience Institute, and the Knight Foundation. University of Washington provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.View all partnersFall 2021 has been filled with a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}