As The Social Media Moral Panic Continues, People Keep Highlighting How Much Value It Actually Provides

Overhype

from the the-moral-panic-is-false dept

I know we’re deep, deep, deep into the moral panic about social media being uniquely awful, especially for kids. It’s driving all sorts of nonsense, including the false idea that we’re in a uniquely excessive period of depression, or that it’s been “proven” that social media makes kids feel bad. But… that’s not what the data actually show.

At all.

Much of this we’ve discussed before, but I think it’s important to highlight again. A lot of people focus on Jonathan Haidt’s work on the impact of social media, but many experts have highlighted that Haidt is a master of cherry-picking studies that support his thesis, and ignoring those that don’t. And even within the stats he uses, he’s been known to cherry-pick the time frames to avoid some more difficult questions. This is quite notable on his claims about suicide rates.

Haidt focuses on the rate between 2000 and 2020, which definitely does show an uptick in the suicide rate:

But, if you go back a little further, you quickly realize that the suicide rate was actually much higher in the 1980s and 1990s. If anything, we should be studying why the rate declined so much at the end of the 90s and into the early 2000s rather than assuming social media must be the cause:

As for the “proven” claims of making kids feel bad about themselves, that’s always people’s misleading interpretation (based on misleading reporting) of internal studies that Facebook did. Those studies did show that a somewhat small percentage of users self-reported that Instagram made them feel worse about themselves. But the same data actually showed a much larger percentage said it made them feel better about themselves. Somehow, that part is never reported even as it’s clear from the data:

The other chart that gets highlighted is even more damning. Facebook surveyed teens, both boys and girls, on 12 different categories regarding whether or not Instagram made them feel better or worse, and (by a wide margin!) boys said it made them feel better on all 12 items. For girls, that was the case for 11 out of the 12 times, and only in one area did “made it worse” edge out “made it better” (and only barely, the two are effectively equal):

And, the point of this study, as you can tell by the fact that it was highlighted in the slide title by the Meta researchers, was to try to deal with that and fix that one problematic area and try to help change that fact.

Yet, all the headlines and claims repeatedly will state, without context, that “Instagram makes girls feel worse about themselves.” That’s… not very accurate in context.

Anyway, against this background (which is now leading to a variety of stupid lawsuits and even stupider legislation) I keep hearing really nice stories about how people have used social media to find communities and deeply enrich their lives.

Last month, Wired had a really nice article about someone who notes that she “found her family on social media.” The author, Kim Haggin Rossi, talks about her own interest in old neon signs, and she found a community of other aficionados on Instagram, who became real life friends, with a closeness that has lasted.

I followed fellow sign shooters on Instagram, and the accounts they followed, and they followed me back. The next thing I knew, with some trepidation, I was driving to Las Vegas to meet a group of about 20 of them, roughly aged 25 to 60, from all over the US and Canada. Los Angeles–based writer, Steve Spiegel, whom I met on that first trip and who’s become a dear friend I connect with daily, shares my apprehension: “I still remember sitting at the Burbank airport thinking, ‘I’m about to spend a weekend in Vegas with a bunch of people I met on an app! This is crazy!’”

Neither of us knew this trip would be the start of an inspiring, supportive community of kindred spirits who’d wind up forever friends. Since that trip, many of us stayed in regular, even daily, contact. We met up for countless local “sign hunts,” traveled across the United States (and once to Cuba), and had a few group exhibits. The ragtag group of 20 strangers in Las Vegas became an international community of over 220. In 2017, four members—Spiegel, Will Hansen, and Mike and Marla Zack—christened the group Signs United. The group was inclusive and open to any vintage neon lovers.

I have to admit that my own experience has been similar. People I know who are not active social media users seem to have a more limited friend group: generally people they know from work, or other parents where their kids attend school. But the more active social media users I know have much larger, wider, and more diverse friend groups, and frequently around shared interests, rather than location or happenstance.

Now, my experience and the one in the article are of adults on social media, so there are questions as to whether or not it’s different for kids. But I don’t think it is. I mean, Danah Boyd has been studying this stuff for decades, and consistently finds that teenagers do what teenagers always do: they just want to hang out and socialize with friends… and explore and experiment to find out who they really are. And the internet often provides the best way to do exactly that. She’s been warning adults to calm down for over a decade, but apparently it’s not working.

The NY Times recently hosted a panel of 11 to 14 year olds, to ask them questions about what they wished adults understood about their generation. It may not be a representative sample, and you may wonder about whether or not the venue may have caused the children to represent themselves in a certain way, but many of them seemed to highlight how valuable the internet is. The whole discussion is actually quite interesting, and again suggests that they’re no different than kids of basically any generation. They want to be social. They want to find where they fit in.

In some cases, the kids are using technology to be creative:

Or they sometimes use social media to plan out how friends nearby can meet in person.

Also there are lots and lots of statements about how the internet is helping these kids learn to communicate and to be themselves.

The kids seem to know that there’s a lot of nonsense online, and not to take most of it seriously, though (as is often the case with people of all ages) some are at least concerned that some, namely others, may be falling for nonsense online.

The kids certainly have mixed feelings about their internet usage, but a lot of them generally seem to think it helps them better connect with their friends:

Meanwhile, so much of the conversation around the moral panic focuses on the (unproven) claim that social media is stressing kids out. Here, the kids are asked what stresses them out and they all say school, or big societal issues. None of them say social media.

Perhaps the schools should be suing themselves for all this stress they’re putting on kids?

Later, the kids are asked what makes them nervous or scared about getting older, and… they say normal adult things. Nothing to do with the internet.

There’s a lot more in there, but it’s another example of kids just being kids, and the internet and social media just being… a tool they use sometimes, often to better connect with their friends.

I did see some people reading through this, through what seems like a very distorted prism, and interpreting some of these kids’ responses regarding their use of social media as “addicts saying they like how their addiction makes them feel.” But when you read what these kids are saying in context, it doesn’t read like that at all. They all use the internet, phones, and social media, because that’s how kids communicate (adults too!), but they use it in perfectly expected ways, and often as a means to an end.

I think many of the people freaking about what the kids are saying about their usage of social media are viewing it through a lens of “social media is not real life, and therefore, these kids are avoiding real life.” But that’s nonsense. Social media is just as “real life” as everything else. These kids are using it to learn and to communicate and to socialize.

If anything, we should be annoyed that modern society has made it more and more difficult for kids to be kids. There are fewer places that kids can just go to hang out with other kids, so it’s no surprise that they gravitate to online places where they can do that.

But, on the whole these anecdotes from this panel continue to support other research, like the Pew Research Center’s recent study that showed that social media is a really useful tool for teens, providing them with “a space for connection, creativity and support.” And the number who find it positive massively outweigh those who find it negative:

Now, obviously, that doesn’t mean it’s great for everyone. There are real issues with cyberbullying and some people who have issues with balancing things. But the focus of interventions should be on figuring out the best ways to support that very small percentage of kids, rather than trying to destroy or ban the internet entirely for kids of this age range.

Filed Under: communities, friends, moral panic, social media, socializing, the kids are alright