Facebook's internal documents showed that on 11 of 12 body image issues, Facebook was helpful to more teens than it was harmful to [1]:

> 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.”

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/28/contrary-to-popular-opin...

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BSDobelix 7 months ago | parent [-]

Written by Mike Masnick.....

Next, face filters are actually good for teenage self-esteem, just don't put mirrors in your house, or onlyfans... where women find the real mental glowup.

	▲	hn_acker 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		> Next, face filters are actually good for teenage self-esteem, just don't put mirrors in your house, or onlyfans... where women find the real mental glowup. Did anyone suggest anything close to that? And why mention OnlyFans? If the number of teen users helped by a social media site with face filters is greater than the number of teen users harmed by the social media site, then the former group might already be avoiding or using the worse features (including but not limited to face filters) in a healthy way. Parents and guardians should be teaching children to use the internet in a healthy way, including by warning that photos on social media can be edited with internal and external tools. Some public schools include the topic of manipulated images on social media in health class. Removing face filters from social media sites that have them might be a good idea, but people with severe body image issues will resort to external tools and post the edited images in their group chats. But I digress. Of the pressures that teen social media users attribute to social media, "overwhelmed because of all the drama" and "like their friends are leaving them out of things" are more prevalent than "worse about their own life" [2]; even then, most teen social media users report that social media makes them feel "more connected to what's going on in their friends' lives" and "like they have people who can support them through tough times" [3]. The percentage of teen social media users reporting that social media has had a net positive effect on them personally is greater than the percentage that report a net negative effect [3] (and the sample probably includes users of TikTok and Instagram, which have face filters). > Written by Mike Masnick..... Wherein he links to [4] the publicized results [5] of Facebook's internal research, provides a major infographic from the results, and follows up with infographics and excerpts from Pew Research, yes. Also, I have to correct what I wrote in my previous comment. What I originally wrote: > Facebook's internal documents showed that on 11 of 12 body image issues, Facebook was helpful to more teens than it was harmful to The evidence I referred to was from public documents about internal research, not internal documents. The infographic was about Instagram, not Facebook. Instagram, which has an app with face filters. The reesearch was about 12 issues, of which one was body image. The corrected version of what I wrote is: < Facebook's public documents on an internal study showed that on 11 of 12 issues (including problematic use, social comparison, and eating issues), Instagram was helpful to more teen users than it was harmful to. The 12th issue was body image. Instagram was helpful to more teen boys than it was harmful to, but more harmful to teen girls than it was helpful to. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42266581 [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/11/16/connection-c... [3] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/11/16/connection-c... [4] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/28/contrary-to-popular-opin... [5] https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Instagram-Te...