Maybe then another article on big tech’s malign censorship and ‘fact’ checking. If they aren’t capable of deciding that Wuhan could have been the source of the Covid lab leak, then they are certainly not responsible enough to be conducting any experiments.
Let’s say it like it is – the whole show is linked into money and political affiliations.
Jon Hawksley
2 years ago
We have a “free” internet because it is driven by advertising revenues. The big companies will respond to laws but imperfectly and there are plenty of other sources of information. What is needed is for users to take responsibility for choosing the sources they go to and learning to distinguish between information that adds to their life and information that is destructive. Children need to be taught how to do this. In particular they need to learn that they are the product of how they use their minds and bodies, for better or worse, the opinions of others are rarely relevant, or helpful, and looks only contribute 1 per cent to what they are.
Edward De Beukelaer
2 years ago
Very good article.
Just one thing I would like to point out is the following phrase in this article: ”but no useful insight into the causes of health issues.” We very much work on the assumption that we can find all causes of illness and that if we cannot ‘prove the cause’ or ‘explain the mechanism behind it’ it does not exists. This is a major issue in medicine and cause huge misery for many patients. Observational studies are likely much more valuable that we give them credit for. Of course, they do not stand up in trials very much. But what is important: stand up in trial with your medicine, or do the best for a population. Very different approaches with very different outcomes… Time for medicine to wake up (some are waking up luckily)…
Norman Powers
2 years ago
Surely insisting that any such research be done fully in public, and especially in collaboration with social scientists, is simply a fast way to kill all such research by companies into their own products. Nobody is going to voluntarily sign up to work with academics on such a task given their tabloid-esque chasing of non-replicable but high impact headlines, and the minimal efforts they put in to ensure accuracy of their results. As for neutrality, well, I think their supposed neutrality is a farce: they are as profit driven as Facebook is, except they count their profit in citations and ambiguous groupthink driven “reputation”.
No, we should encourage companies to do such research on their own products, because actually Facebook don’t want their products to cause mental health problems. That should be obvious. If Instagram makes people feel depressed then some large proportion of those people will just stop using it and that will cause them to make less money. And thus if their research proves there is a link, and that there is a fix, then we can assume they’ll want to implement that fix unless it’s something absurdly OTT like “shut down the whole site” (which is the kind of fix I’d expect social scientists to propose).
Barry Stokes
2 years ago
This was all being explored much earlier than the late 1950s. ‘In 1939, German scientist Franz Muller presented the first epidemiological study linking tobacco use and cancer. In 1943, German scientists Eberhard Schairer and Erich Shoniger at Jena University confirmed this study and convincingly established for the first time that cigarette smoking is a direct cause of lung cancer.’ German doctors also coined the phrase ‘passive smoking’. See The Atlantic magazine, July 9, 2014.
Neil MacInnes
2 years ago
The problem is not Instagram.
It’s people, in this case kids, comparing themselves to other people on Instagram and believing that, somehow, they come up short.
We had the same story with the movies, tv, fashion & glamour magazines etc, in fact anywhere that people can go and see other people who are better looking, sexier, cleverer, stronger, faster, more skilful etc etc etc than they are.
The only comparison that is guaranteed to make people feel better about themselves is with politicians.
Bring back Trump, that comparison made everybody feel great.
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago
We know intuitively that tech-enabled communication is inferior to (real)face-to-(real)face community. The adults in the (world)room ought to take responsibility for the mental welfare of their children, rather than conceding parental authority to Facebooboo, Instadrug or any other artificial intelligence.
Michael Coleman
2 years ago
Excellent piece. Ritchie never disappoints.
Suppose high quality and high powered (statistically) research finds a small detrimental effect (which is likely). The magnitude of the effect will have to be compared relative to all the other negative potential influences in young girls lives (movies, videos, etc.) . It seems that negative potential influences are inevitable and thus the only resource for parents is to emotionally prepare the girls for the onslaught (other than sending them to convents)
Maybe then another article on big tech’s malign censorship and ‘fact’ checking. If they aren’t capable of deciding that Wuhan could have been the source of the Covid lab leak, then they are certainly not responsible enough to be conducting any experiments.
Let’s say it like it is – the whole show is linked into money and political affiliations.
We have a “free” internet because it is driven by advertising revenues. The big companies will respond to laws but imperfectly and there are plenty of other sources of information. What is needed is for users to take responsibility for choosing the sources they go to and learning to distinguish between information that adds to their life and information that is destructive. Children need to be taught how to do this. In particular they need to learn that they are the product of how they use their minds and bodies, for better or worse, the opinions of others are rarely relevant, or helpful, and looks only contribute 1 per cent to what they are.
Very good article.
Just one thing I would like to point out is the following phrase in this article: ”but no useful insight into the causes of health issues.”
We very much work on the assumption that we can find all causes of illness and that if we cannot ‘prove the cause’ or ‘explain the mechanism behind it’ it does not exists. This is a major issue in medicine and cause huge misery for many patients.
Observational studies are likely much more valuable that we give them credit for. Of course, they do not stand up in trials very much. But what is important: stand up in trial with your medicine, or do the best for a population. Very different approaches with very different outcomes…
Time for medicine to wake up (some are waking up luckily)…
Surely insisting that any such research be done fully in public, and especially in collaboration with social scientists, is simply a fast way to kill all such research by companies into their own products. Nobody is going to voluntarily sign up to work with academics on such a task given their tabloid-esque chasing of non-replicable but high impact headlines, and the minimal efforts they put in to ensure accuracy of their results. As for neutrality, well, I think their supposed neutrality is a farce: they are as profit driven as Facebook is, except they count their profit in citations and ambiguous groupthink driven “reputation”.
No, we should encourage companies to do such research on their own products, because actually Facebook don’t want their products to cause mental health problems. That should be obvious. If Instagram makes people feel depressed then some large proportion of those people will just stop using it and that will cause them to make less money. And thus if their research proves there is a link, and that there is a fix, then we can assume they’ll want to implement that fix unless it’s something absurdly OTT like “shut down the whole site” (which is the kind of fix I’d expect social scientists to propose).
This was all being explored much earlier than the late 1950s. ‘In 1939, German scientist Franz Muller presented the first epidemiological study linking tobacco use and cancer. In 1943, German scientists Eberhard Schairer and Erich Shoniger at Jena University confirmed this study and convincingly established for the first time that cigarette smoking is a direct cause of lung cancer.’ German doctors also coined the phrase ‘passive smoking’. See The Atlantic magazine, July 9, 2014.
The problem is not Instagram.
It’s people, in this case kids, comparing themselves to other people on Instagram and believing that, somehow, they come up short.
We had the same story with the movies, tv, fashion & glamour magazines etc, in fact anywhere that people can go and see other people who are better looking, sexier, cleverer, stronger, faster, more skilful etc etc etc than they are.
The only comparison that is guaranteed to make people feel better about themselves is with politicians.
Bring back Trump, that comparison made everybody feel great.
We know intuitively that tech-enabled communication is inferior to (real)face-to-(real)face community. The adults in the (world)room ought to take responsibility for the mental welfare of their children, rather than conceding parental authority to Facebooboo, Instadrug or any other artificial intelligence.
Excellent piece. Ritchie never disappoints.
Suppose high quality and high powered (statistically) research finds a small detrimental effect (which is likely). The magnitude of the effect will have to be compared relative to all the other negative potential influences in young girls lives (movies, videos, etc.) . It seems that negative potential influences are inevitable and thus the only resource for parents is to emotionally prepare the girls for the onslaught (other than sending them to convents)