This reads like a perfect case of extremely tenous correlation passed off as causation for the sake of media hysteria. Sure, some teens react to Instagram posts in self destructive ways, just as some teens react to all kinds of otherwise normal things in self destructive ways. And so? The problem there lies with the mental health treatment of those teens, not by insinuating that a whole normally ordinary category of human activity should be considered "problematic" because it happened to adversely affect a few abnormally mentally unbalanced individuals. Reminds me of the whole "violent video games cause violent behavior and school shootings" nonsense, which was just as absurd a hackneyed media-generated nonsense with no evidence-based backing used to generate views.
Before Instagram, we had magazines to help teens compare themselves to an unrealistic ideal. I had an English teacher in high school who had an entire wall plastered with problematic themes in magazine ads, so it would highlight the subtle messages we are receiving when we look at these ads. I used to love buying fashion magazines and looking at the ads before I took that woman’s class, and after that I totally stopped buying them.
Now, I do think Instagram is way more insidious because you’d now be thinking you are comparing to other normal teens rather than at least knowing these are special magazine people. But my point is that the teacher who explicitly taught us about these patterns and influences did so much more to “protect” us from these negative effects than trying to ban/blame the magazines would have done.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] threadNow, I do think Instagram is way more insidious because you’d now be thinking you are comparing to other normal teens rather than at least knowing these are special magazine people. But my point is that the teacher who explicitly taught us about these patterns and influences did so much more to “protect” us from these negative effects than trying to ban/blame the magazines would have done.
Sadly, I don't think this will even push many to leave it.