tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/snapchat-8000/articlesSnapchat – The Conversation2024-02-07T12:03:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224082024-02-07T12:03:02Z2024-02-07T12:03:02ZUsing AI to monitor the internet for terror content is inescapable – but also fraught with pitfalls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573450/original/file-20240205-17-4tssh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C0%2C3693%2C2460&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/technology-security-concept-personal-authentication-system-709257292">metamorworks/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every minute, millions of social media posts, photos and videos flood the internet. <a href="https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/social-media-statistics">On average</a>, Facebook users share 694,000 stories, X (formerly Twitter) users post 360,000 posts, Snapchat users send 2.7 million snaps and YouTube users upload more than 500 hours of video. </p>
<p>This vast ocean of online material needs to be constantly monitored for harmful or illegal content, like promoting terrorism and violence. </p>
<p>The sheer volume of content means that it’s not possible for people to inspect and check all of it manually, which is why automated tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), are essential. But such tools also have their limitations. </p>
<p>The concerted effort in recent years to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2023.2222901">develop tools</a> for the identification and removal of online terrorist content has, in part, been fuelled by the emergence of new laws and regulations. This includes the EU’s terrorist content online <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32021R0784">regulation</a>, which requires hosting service providers to remove terrorist content from their platform within one hour of receiving a removal order from a competent national authority.</p>
<h2>Behaviour and content-based tools</h2>
<p>In broad terms, there are two types of tools used to root out terrorist content. The first looks at certain account and message behaviour. This includes how old the account is, the use of trending or unrelated hashtags and abnormal posting volume. </p>
<p>In many ways, this is similar to spam detection, in that it does not pay attention to content, and is <a href="https://www.resolvenet.org/research/remove-impede-disrupt-redirect-understanding-combating-pro-islamic-state-use-file-sharing">valuable for detecting</a> the rapid dissemination of large volumes of content, which are often bot-driven. </p>
<p>The second type of tool is content-based. It focuses on linguistic characteristics, word use, images and web addresses. Automated content-based tools take <a href="https://tate.techagainstterrorism.org/news/tcoaireport">one of two approaches</a>. </p>
<p><strong>1. Matching</strong></p>
<p>The first approach is based on comparing new images or videos to an existing database of images and videos that have previously been identified as terrorist in nature. One challenge here is that terror groups are known to try and evade such methods by producing subtle variants of the same piece of content. </p>
<p>After the Christchurch terror attack in New Zealand in 2019, for example, hundreds of visually distinct versions of the livestream video of the atrocity <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/technical-update-on-new-zealand/">were in circulation</a>. </p>
<p>So, to combat this, matching-based tools generally use <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2019/08/open-source-photo-video-matching/">perceptual hashing</a> rather than cryptographic hashing. Hashes are a bit like digital fingerprints, and cryptographic hashing acts like a secure, unique identity tag. Even changing a single pixel in an image drastically alters its fingerprint, preventing false matches. </p>
<p>Perceptual hashing, on the other hand, focuses on similarity. It overlooks minor changes like pixel colour adjustments, but identifies images with the same core content. This makes perceptual hashing more resilient to tiny alterations to a piece of content. But it also means that the hashes are not entirely random, and so could potentially be used to try and <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/black-box-attacks-on-perceptual-image-hashes-with-gans-cc1be11f277">recreate</a> the original image.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A close up of a mobile phone screen displaying several social media apps." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573540/original/file-20240205-25-jovm4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Millions of posts, images and videos are uploaded to social media platforms every minute.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/moscow-russia-29072023-new-elon-musks-2339442245">Viktollio/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>2. Classification</strong></p>
<p>The second approach relies on classifying content. It <a href="https://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/insights/whitepaper/ofcom-use-ai-online-content-moderation">uses</a> machine learning and other forms of AI, such as natural language processing. To achieve this, the AI needs a lot of examples like texts labelled as terrorist content or not by human content moderators. By analysing these examples, the AI learns which features distinguish different types of content, allowing it to categorise new content on its own. </p>
<p>Once trained, the algorithms are then able to predict whether a new item of content belongs to one of the specified categories. These items may then be removed or flagged for human review. </p>
<p>This approach also <a href="https://tate.techagainstterrorism.org/news/tcoaireport">faces challenges</a>, however. Collecting and preparing a large dataset of terrorist content to train the algorithms is time-consuming and <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/69799/">resource-intensive</a>. </p>
<p>The training data may also become dated quickly, as terrorists make use of new terms and discuss new world events and current affairs. Algorithms also have difficulty understanding context, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719897945">subtlety and irony</a>. They also <a href="https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mixed-Messages-Paper.pdf">lack</a> cultural sensitivity, including variations in dialect and language use across different groups. </p>
<p>These limitations can have important offline effects. There have been documented failures to remove hate speech in countries such as <a href="https://restofworld.org/2021/why-facebook-keeps-failing-in-ethiopia/">Ethiopia</a> and <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/the-thread/facebooks-content-moderation-language-barrier/">Romania</a>, while free speech activists in countries such as <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/revealed-seven-years-later-how-facebook-shuts-down-free-speech-egypt">Egypt</a>, <a href="https://syrianobserver.com/news/58430/facebook-deletes-accounts-of-assad-opponents.html">Syria</a> and <a href="https://www.accessnow.org/transparency-required-is-facebooks-effort-to-clean-up-operation-carthage-damaging-free-expression-in-tunisia/">Tunisia</a> have reported having their content removed.</p>
<h2>We still need human moderators</h2>
<p>So, in spite of advances in AI, human input remains essential. It is important for maintaining databases and datasets, assessing content flagged for review and operating appeals processes for when decisions are challenged. </p>
<p>But this is demanding and draining work, and there have been <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-content-moderators-ireland">damning reports</a> regarding the working conditions of moderators, with many tech companies such as Meta <a href="https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/who-moderates-social-media-giants-call-end-outsourcing">outsourcing</a> this work to third-party vendors. </p>
<p>To address this, we <a href="https://tate.techagainstterrorism.org/news/tcoaireport">recommend</a> the development of a set of minimum standards for those employing content moderators, including mental health provision. There is also potential to develop AI tools to safeguard the wellbeing of moderators. This would work, for example, by blurring out areas of images so that moderators can reach a decision without viewing disturbing content directly. </p>
<p>But at the same time, few, if any, platforms have the resources needed to develop automated content moderation tools and employ a sufficient number of human reviewers with the required expertise. </p>
<p>Many platforms have turned to off-the-shelf products. It is estimated that the content moderation solutions market will be <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/content-moderation-solutions-market-to-cross-us-32-bn-by-2031-tmr-report-301514155.html">worth $32bn by 2031</a>. </p>
<p>But caution is needed here. Third-party providers are not currently subject to the same level of oversight as tech platforms themselves. They may rely disproportionately on automated tools, with insufficient human input and a lack of transparency regarding the datasets used to train their algorithms.</p>
<p>So, collaborative initiatives between governments and the private sector are essential. For example, the EU-funded <a href="https://tate.techagainstterrorism.org/">Tech Against Terrorism Europe</a> project has developed valuable resources for tech companies. There are also examples of automated content moderation tools being made openly available like Meta’s <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2022/12/meta-launches-new-content-moderation-tool/">Hasher-Matcher-Actioner</a>, which companies can use to build their own database of hashed terrorist content. </p>
<p>International organisations, governments and tech platforms must prioritise the development of such collaborative resources. Without this, effectively addressing online terror content will remain elusive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Macdonald receives funding from the EU Internal Security Fund for the project Tech Against Terrorism Europe (ISF-2021-AG-TCO-101080101). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ashley A. Mattheis receives funding from the EU Internal Security Fund for the project Tech Against Terrorism Europe (ISF-2021-AG-TCO-101080101).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Wells receives funding from the Council of Europe to conduct an analysis of emerging patterns of misuse of technology by terrorist actors (ongoing)</span></em></p>The complex task of tackling online terror needs human eyes as well as artificial intelligence.Stuart Macdonald, Professor of Law, Swansea UniversityAshley A. Mattheis, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Law and Government, Dublin City UniversityDavid Wells, Honorary Research Associate at the Cyber Threats Research Centre, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222562024-02-01T13:33:05Z2024-02-01T13:33:05ZAre social media apps ‘dangerous products’? 2 scholars explain how the companies rely on young users but fail to protect them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572539/original/file-20240131-19-ltvgx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4929%2C3283&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The CEOs of Discord, Snap, TikTok, X and Meta prepare to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 31, 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jason-citron-ceo-of-discord-evan-spiegel-ceo-of-snap-shou-news-photo/1975356383">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“You have blood on your hands.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.”</p>
<p>These quotes, the first from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaking to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the second from Zuckerberg to families of victims of online child abuse in the audience, are highlights from an extraordinary day of <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/big-tech-and-the-online-child-sexual-exploitation-crisis">testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee </a>about protecting children online. </p>
<p>But perhaps the most telling quote from the Jan. 31, 2024, hearing came not from the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X, Discord or Snap but from Sen. Graham in his opening statement: Social media platforms “as they are currently designed and operate are dangerous products.”</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=yu4Ew7gAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">university researchers</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=AkbGPz4AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">who study</a> how social media organizes news, information and communities. Whether or not social media apps meet the legal definition of “<a href="https://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/unreasonably-dangerous.html">unreasonably dangerous products</a>,” the social media companies’ business models do rely on having millions of young users. At the same time, we believe that the companies have not invested sufficient resources to effectively protect those users.</p>
<p>Mobile device use by children and teens <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/kids-screen-time-rose-during-the-pandemic-and-stayed-high-thats-a-problem/2023/02">skyrocketed during the pandemic and has stayed high</a>. Naturally, teens want to be where their friends are, be it the skate park or on social media. In 2022, there were an estimated 49.8 million users age 17 and under of YouTube, 19 million of TikTok, 18 million of Snapchat, 16.7 million of Instagram, 9.9 million of Facebook and 7 million of Twitter, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295337">according to a recent study</a> by researchers at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health. </p>
<p>Teens are a significant revenue source for social media companies. Revenue from users 17 and under of social media <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295337">was US$11 billion</a> in 2022, according to the Chan School study. Instagram netted nearly $5 billion, while TikTok and YouTube each accrued over $2 billion. Teens mean green.</p>
<p>Social media poses a <a href="https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/surgeon-general-advisory-social-media-poses-profound-risk-of-harm-to-kids/">range of risks for teens</a>, from exposing them to harassment, bullying and sexual exploitation to encouraging eating disorders and suicidal ideation. For Congress to take meaningful action on protecting children online, we identify three issues that need to be accounted for: age, business model and content moderation.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yUAfRod2xgI?wmode=transparent&start=261" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Following vigorous prompting from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to families of victims of online child abuse.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How old are you?</h2>
<p>Social media companies have an incentive to look the other way in terms of their users’ ages. Otherwise they would have to spend the resources to moderate their content appropriately. Millions of underage users – those under 13 – are an “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/technology/instagram-meta-children-privacy.html">open secret</a>” at Meta. Meta has <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2022/06/new-ways-to-verify-age-on-instagram/">described some potential strategies</a> to verify user ages, like requiring identification or video selfies, and using AI to guess their age based on “Happy Birthday” messages. </p>
<p>However, the accuracy of these methods is not publicly open to scrutiny, so it’s difficult to audit them independently.</p>
<p>Meta has stated that <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2023/11/online-teen-safety-legislation-is-needed/">online teen safety legislation is needed</a> to prevent harm, but the company points to app stores, currently dominated by Apple and Google, as the place where age verification should happen. However, these guardrails can be easily circumvented by accessing a social media platform’s website rather than its app.</p>
<h2>New generations of customers</h2>
<p>Teen adoption is crucial for continued growth of all social media platforms. The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039?mod=bigtop-breadcrumb">Facebook Files</a>, an investigation based on a review of company documents, showed that Instagram’s growth strategy relies on teens helping family members, particularly younger siblings, get on the platform. Meta claims it optimizes for “meaningful social interaction,” prioritizing family and friends’ content over other interests. However, Instagram allows pseudonymity and multiple accounts, which makes parental oversight even more difficult.</p>
<p>On Nov. 7, 2023, <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023-11-07_-_testimony_-_bejar.pdf">Auturo Bejar</a>, a former senior engineer at Facebook, testified before Congress. At Meta he surveyed teen Instagram users and found 24% of 13- to 15-year-olds said they had received unwanted advances within the past seven days, a fact he characterizes as “likely the largest-scale sexual harassment of teens to have ever happened.” Meta has since <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2024/01/introducing-stricter-message-settings-for-teens-on-instagram-and-facebook/">implemented restrictions</a> on direct messaging in its products for underage users.</p>
<p>But to be clear, widespread harassment, bullying and solicitation is a part of the landscape of social media, and it’s going to take more than parents and app stores to rein it in.</p>
<p>Meta recently announced that it is aiming to provide teens with “<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2024/01/teen-protections-age-appropriate-experiences-on-our-apps/">age-appropriate experiences</a>,” in part by prohibiting searches for terms related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. However, these steps don’t stop online communities that promote these harmful behaviors from flourishing on the company’s social media platforms. It takes a carefully trained team of human moderators to monitor and enforce terms of service violations for dangerous groups.</p>
<h2>Content moderation</h2>
<p>Social media companies point to the promise of artificial intelligence to moderate content and provide safety on their platforms, but AI is not a silver bullet for managing human behavior. Communities adapt quickly to AI moderation, augmenting banned words with purposeful misspellings and creating backup accounts to prevent getting kicked off a platform.</p>
<p>Human content moderation is also problematic, given social media companies’ business models and practices. Since 2022, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/25/tech-layoffs-2023-list/">social media companies</a> have implemented massive layoffs that struck at the heart of their trust and safety operations and weakened content moderation across the industry. </p>
<p>Congress will need hard data from the social media companies – data the companies have not provided to date – to assess the appropriate ratio of moderators to users.</p>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>In health care, professionals have a duty to warn if they believe something dangerous might happen. When these uncomfortable truths surface in corporate research, little is done to inform the public of threats to safety. Congress could mandate reporting when internal studies reveal damaging outcomes. </p>
<p>Helping teens today will require social media companies to invest in human content moderation and meaningful age verification. But even that is not likely to fix the problem. The challenge is facing the reality that social media as it exists today thrives on having legions of young users spending significant time in environments that put them at risk. These dangers for young users are baked into the design of contemporary social media, which requires much clearer statutes about who polices social media and when intervention is needed.</p>
<p>One of the motives for tech companies not to segment their user base by age, which would better protect children, is how it would affect advertising revenue. Congress has limited tools available to enact change, such as enforcing laws about advertising transparency, including “know your customer” rules. Especially as AI accelerates targeted marketing, social media companies are going to continue making it easy for advertisers to reach users of any age. But if advertisers knew what proportion of ads were seen by children, rather than adults, they may think twice about where they place ads in the future.</p>
<p>Despite a number of high-profile hearings on the harms of social media, Congress has not yet passed legislation to protect children or make social media platforms liable for the content published on their platforms. But with so many young people online post-pandemic, it’s up to Congress to implement guardrails that ultimately put privacy and community safety at the center of social media design.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Donovan is on the board of Free Press and the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Parker works for the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University. Their work is largely funded by the Government of Canada. </span></em></p>As legislators rail against social media companies, the companies continue to put millions of young people at risk. Here’s how − and what can be done about it.Joan Donovan, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies, Boston UniversitySara Parker, Research Analyst at the Media Ecosystem Observatory, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2179262023-11-26T19:20:31Z2023-11-26T19:20:31ZCasual, distant, aesthetically limited: 5 ways smartphone photography is changing how we see the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560139/original/file-20231117-28-ysib4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=428%2C169%2C3017%2C1961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">T.J. Thomson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Smartphones are a staple of modern life and are changing how we see the world and show it to others. Almost <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/321477/smartphone-user-penetration-in-australia/">90% of Aussies own one</a>, and we spend an average of <a href="https://www.reviews.org/au/mobile/2022-mobile-phone-usage-statistics/#:%7E:text=How%20much%20do%20you%20spend,day%20compared%20to%20last%20year">5.6 hours</a> using them each day. Smartphones are also responsible for more than <a href="https://photutorial.com/photos-statistics/">90% of all the photographs</a> made this year. </p>
<p>But compare the camera roll of a 60-year-old with that of a 13-year-old, as we recently did, and you’ll find some surprising differences. In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1051144X.2023.2281163?src=">research published in the Journal of Visual Literacy</a>, we looked at how different generations use smartphones for photography as well as broader trends that reveal how these devices change the way we see the world. </p>
<p>Here are five patterns we observed.</p>
<h2>1. We make images more casually and with a wider subject matter</h2>
<p>Before the first smartphone camera was released in 2007, cameras were used more selectively and for a narrower range of purposes. You might only see them at events like weddings and graduations, or at tourist hotspots on holidays. </p>
<p>Now, they’re ubiquitous in everyday life. We use smartphones to document our meals, our daily gym progress, and our classwork as well as the more “special” moments in our lives.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A triptych of everyday photos showing a meal, a book, and a bottle of medicine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560069/original/file-20231116-17-j2pkgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the old days cameras only came out for special occasions, but we now tend to use our smartphones to document a wider range of subject matter, including our most recent meal, something we see and want to add to our shopping wish list, or an item at the shops that we want to confirm with a family member.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">T.J. Thomson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many middle-aged people use smartphones most for work-related purposes. One of our participants put it this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I often take photos of info I want to save, or of clients’ work when I want to then email it to myself to put on the computer. I feel like I’ve gotten a little slack on socially taking photos of friends … but in the day-to-day, I feel like I use it very practically now for basically work, grabbing a photo to upload it online somewhere.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>2. We aren’t as selfie-obsessed as some would think</h2>
<p>Our participants only used their phone’s front “selfie” camera 14% of the time. They acknowledged the stigma around selfies and didn’t want to be perceived as narcissistic.</p>
<h2>3. We’re seeing more vertical compositions</h2>
<p>In years past, whether you had a bulky DSLR camera or a lightweight disposable, the “default” grip was to hold it with two hands in a horizontal way. This leads to photos in landscape orientation. </p>
<p>But the vertical design of smartphones and accompanying apps, such as Instagram and Snapchat, are resulting in more photos in portrait orientation. Participants said holding their smartphone cameras this way was more convenient and faster. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshots from Instagram, X, and Snapchat, showing photos with a vertical orientation or portrait aspect ratio." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560072/original/file-20231116-26-acgst3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vertical design of smartphones and associated popular social media apps, such as Snapchat, Instagram, and X, influences how people use their smartphone cameras.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Instagram / X / Snapchat</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. We like to keep our distance</h2>
<p>Participants made more images of people from farther away compared to getting close. Intimate “head and face” framing was only present in fewer than 10% of the images. </p>
<p>In one participant’s words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I feel like my friends and I get frustrated with parents, when they’re zooming in a photo or they walk in really close. My mom would always get one like right in my face, like <em>this is too close!</em> I don’t want to see this. The zoom in, oh, it’s frustrating!</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>5. We get inspired by what we see online</h2>
<p>Teenagers in particular mentioned social media, especially Instagram, as influencing their visual sensibilities. Older adults were more likely to attribute their sense of aesthetics to physical media, such as photography books, magazines and posters. </p>
<p>This aesthetic inspiration impacts what we take photos of, and also how we do it. For example, young people mentioned a centred compositional approach most often. In contrast, older generations invoked the “rule of thirds” approach more often.</p>
<p>One participant contrasted generational differences like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There seems to be a real lack of interest [by younger people] in say, composition, or the use of light or that sort of aesthetic side of getting an image. When my partner and I were kids […] our access to different aesthetics and images was actually very limited. You had the four channels on TV, you had magazines, you had the occasional film, you had record covers, and that was it, you know. Whereas, kids these days, they’re saturated with images but the aesthetic aspect doesn’t seem to be that important to them.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why the way we make images matters</h2>
<p>While technology is changing the way people see the world and make photographs, it’s important to reflect on why we do what we do, and with what effects. </p>
<p>For example, the camera angle we use might either give or take away symbolic power from the subject. Photographing an athlete or politician from below makes them look more strong and heroic, while photographing a refugee from above can make them look less powerful. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two photos: one taken from a low angle looking up at a posing skateboarder, the other taken from a standing height looking down at three people sitting on the ground at the base of a wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560081/original/file-20231116-29-i6ltod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vertical camera angle can sometimes be used pragmatically but sometimes connotes symbolic power differences. The low angle of the athlete at left provides more symbolic power than the high angle of the three figures at right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vladislav Todorov via Unsplash (left) / Aleksandr Kadykov via Unsplash (right)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sometimes the camera angles we use are harmless or driven by practicality – think photographing a receipt to get reimbursed later – but other times, the angles we use matter and can reinforce existing inequalities.</p>
<p>As the number of images made each year increases and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ageism-sexism-classism-and-more-7-examples-of-bias-in-ai-generated-images-208748">new ways to make images</a> emerge, being thoughtful about how we use our cameras or other image-making technology becomes more important.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217926/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research underpinning this article was supported by a research grant from the International Visual Literacy Association. T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research underpinning this article was supported by a research grant from the International Visual Literacy Association. Shehab Uddin is affiliated with Pathshala South Asian Media Institute.
. </span></em></p>Camera rolls reveal how photography is transforming in the smartphone era.T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT UniversityShehab Uddin, Programme Director, Higher Degree Research, Pathshala South Asian Media InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109562023-10-27T12:17:55Z2023-10-27T12:17:55ZWhy Elon Musk is obsessed with casting X as the most ‘authentic’ social media platform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555929/original/file-20231025-19-mfd5h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5521%2C3772&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">X CEO Elon Musk has argued that his social media platform allows users to 'be their true selves.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elon-musk-ceo-of-tesla-and-x-arrives-for-the-ai-insight-news-photo/1678314548?adppopup=true">Nathan Howard/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With X, formerly known as Twitter, hitting the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html">one-year anniversary</a> of Elon Musk’s US$44 billion takeover of the social media platform, it can feel disorienting to try to make sense of all that’s gone down. </p>
<p>Blue check-mark verifications <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/personaltech/twitter-blue-check-musk.html">got hawked</a>. Internal company documents about content moderation policies <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using-the-twitter-files-to-discredit-foes-and-push-conspiracy-theor">got laundered</a>. A puzzling rebrand to “X” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/24/elon-musk-x-twitter-rebrand-logo/">got hatched</a>. And a literal cage match with Meta head Mark Zuckerberg was on again and, ultimately, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/zuckerberg-musk-cage-fight.html">off again</a>.</p>
<p>It appears unclear what, precisely, Musk’s ambitions are for the platform. But when a threatening competitor, Threads, emerged in summer 2023, he may have offered a brief window of insight.</p>
<p>A clone of X, Threads <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/10/threads-meta-twitter-zuckerberg/">rolled up 100 million users</a> in less than a week after its June launch, becoming the fastest-growing app of all time. Musk promptly erupted with two attacks on Zuckerberg’s creation.</p>
<p>The first was catty and, as such, invited notice within digital spaces programmed to promote outrage. <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1676770522200252417?lang=en">Musk declared</a>, “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1676770522200252417"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678686570122199040">The second</a> – “You are free to be your true self here” – was more overlooked, yet revealed an essential premise that social media companies must sell to all their users.</p>
<p>As I argue in my new book, “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36333">The Authenticity Industries</a>,” authenticity represents the central battle for social media companies. They design their platforms to demonstrate and facilitate genuine self-performance from users. That’s what makes for dependable data, and dependable data – sold to advertisers – is <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-georgetown-speech-authentic.html">what makes the internet economy hum</a>.</p>
<p>Silicon Valley’s commitment to the ideal of authenticity remains ironclad, even as more and more people are starting to recognize that <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swifts-eras-tour-is-a-potent-reminder-that-the-internet-is-not-real-life-209325">the internet isn’t real life</a>.</p>
<h2>A life performed</h2>
<p>Over the past decade, Instagram – with its glossy, obsessively manicured tableaux – became the aesthetic antithesis against which all other social media platforms measure that authenticity. </p>
<p>Instagram tinted life by allowing users to apply sun-kissed, nostalgic filters to their photographs. To scrub clean any blemishes on selfies posted there, add-ons like Facetune enabled magazine-quality Photoshopping <a href="https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-rejection-of-internet-perfection?s=r.">and topped paid-app charts</a>. Instagram became your highlight reel: galleries of far-flung travels and mouth-watering food porn exquisitely curated – a life performed as much as lived.</p>
<p>“[Instagram’s] basically almost designed to make your friends jealous,” one executive at TikTok <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36333">confided to me</a>. “It kind of makes me depressed a little bit sometimes when I go on Instagram and I feel, like, ‘Oh, I’m not fit enough. I’m not successful enough.’”</p>
<p>Over time, #NoFilter caveats, blurry photo dumps and shameless “finsta” accounts – a portmanteau of “fake” and “Instagram” – <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/bereal-authenticity-performance-online-instagram">arose as forms of authenticity backlash</a> to the “false happiness” of the posed lifestyles appearing on users’ feeds.</p>
<p>Heck, even Instagram knew it had a problem, copy-and-pasting Snapchat’s signature ephemerality and <a href="https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-instagram-stories">launching its disappearing Stories feature</a> to lower the pressure on users to post perfection.</p>
<p>If ever a platform, then, has been deserving of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/business/media/miquela-virtual-influencer.html">Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s 2019 quip</a> that “social media, to date, has largely been the domain of real humans being fake,” it’s probably Instagram.</p>
<h2>Different flavors of the same thing</h2>
<p>Recall Musk’s second, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678686570122199040">more revelatory rejoinder</a> on behalf of X: “You are free to be your true self here.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1678686570122199040"}"></div></p>
<p>For two decades, this has been the first commandment of social media promotion – both by platforms and on them.</p>
<p>More broadly, all online communication bears the burden of proof in this vein: It must compensate for the absence of face-to-face verifiability, which a 1993 Peter Steiner <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog">cartoon for The New Yorker</a> satirized with the caption, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”</p>
<p>Research confirms this. One <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/1/10">clever study</a> by media scholars Meredith Salisbury and Jefferson Pooley scoured the publicity pablum, CEO platitudes and app store copy from Friendster onward, finding that nearly every site leans on the same rhetorical clichés – like “real life” and “genuine” – as a means of defining itself against the purported phoniness of other sites.</p>
<p>But this might well be the narcissism of tiny differences at work, with Threads only the latest instance of social media copycatting. </p>
<p>In 2020, Wired <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/social-media-giants-look-the-same-tiktok-twitter-instagram/">incisively tallied</a> how <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/introducing-fleets-new-way-to-join-the-conversation">X’s Fleets</a>, a 24-hour posting-expiration feature, was a copy of Instagram’s Stories, which was itself originally ripped off from Snapchat. <a href="https://influencermarketinghub.com/what-is-snap-spotlight/">Snapchat developed Spotlight</a> for short-form video content, comparable to Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts, all of which were an attempt to fend off TikTok, itself a reincarnation of Vine.</p>
<p>And all of these, including last year’s 56 million-times-downloaded viral sensation, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/17/bereal-copy-tiktok-instagram-snapchat/">BeReal</a> – where users snap unfiltered, unposed selfies for friends at random times daily – have promised users the opportunity to be their true selves. </p>
<p>In as much as Musk has pursued anything in his first year as Chief Twit, that seems to be his ambition: engineering a space with no social guardrails, where any inhibitions of decorum are ignored in favor of speaking, authentically, from the heart.</p>
<h2>Ambitions don’t match reality</h2>
<p>To a certain kind of personality, that’s probably an alluring offer. Indeed, Zuckerberg’s original – and still most enduring – platform triumph, Facebook, depended on designing a website that induced an online performance of a “true” offline self.</p>
<p>Those norms were embedded in design choices, as Zuckerberg made plain his disregard for our <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708488/the-presentation-of-self-in-everyday-life-by-erving-goffman/">multistage, two-faced selves</a> in an <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Facebook-Effect/David-Kirkpatrick/9781439102121">oft-quoted line</a>, “You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.”</p>
<p>“Single-identity authenticity” was Facebook’s early market strategy, and the nascent website initially required users to register with a college email address. The design choice may well have been critical to Facebook vanquishing its closest early competitors, <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/556413/friendster-rise-and-fall-jonathan-abrams">Friendster</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-myspace/69444/">Myspace</a>.</p>
<p>“The .edu email system served as this authenticating clearinghouse,” one early Facebook executive <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36333">explained to me</a>, a phrasing that could as easily be applied to the utility of Instagram accounts today for Threads. “Really, users 0 through 10 million were all verified and authenticated by the .edu email system, [while] Myspace had 57 Jennifer Anistons.”</p>
<p>That authenticating clearinghouse would soon vanish as Facebook opened itself up to users not enrolled in college – like, say, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-russia-fake-accounts-126-million">the disinformation agents</a> who have meddled in U.S. elections from Russia.</p>
<h2>A regression to the meanest</h2>
<p>All this competition makes for authenticity jockeying: Musk attempted to parry Zuckerberg’s Threads threat with his invitation to convene strangers who will stop being polite and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World_(TV_series)">start getting real</a>. </p>
<p>But in an ominous echo of Rupert Murdoch’s $500 million <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/as-myspace-sells-for-35-million-a-history-of-the-networks-valuation/241224/">write-off</a> of Myspace, Musk’s $44 billion purchase has struggled with those bot-and-blue check mark difficulties of user verification.</p>
<p>None of this is to say Threads will eventually triumph over X, even as the crisis in the Middle East – and the misinformation circulating because of it – <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2023/10/x-twitter-elon-musk-israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-meta-threads.html">seems to have initiated</a> another exodus of defectors from X. After all, a month after its launch, Threads had already lost <a href="https://gizmodo.com/threads-has-lost-more-than-80-of-daily-active-users-1850707329">an estimated</a> 80% of its daily active users.</p>
<p>Threads’ vibes may have been cheerful and friendly at the outset – disingenuously so, according to Musk – but it may well prove that, eventually, all social media sites regress toward the meanest. </p>
<p>Musk would probably call that “authenticity.” On X, you might not be able to trust the veracity of the user or the information they’re spreading. But you can be sure that they don’t feel like they have to bite their tongue and act nice.</p>
<p>Social media company names may change. But when identity is the most lucrative commodity they trade in, their fetishization of authenticity won’t.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Serazio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With identity the most lucrative commodity social media platforms trade in, their fetishization of authenticity remains ironclad.Michael Serazio, Associate Professor of Communication, Boston CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2117442023-08-18T06:24:55Z2023-08-18T06:24:55ZSnapchat’s ‘creepy’ AI blunder reminds us that chatbots aren’t people. But as the lines blur, the risks grow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543406/original/file-20230818-5303-3rxdd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C25%2C5615%2C3707&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Artificial intelligence-powered (AI) chatbots are becoming increasingly human-like by design, to the point that some among us may struggle to distinguish between human and machine.</p>
<p>This week, Snapchat’s My AI chatbot glitched and posted a story of what looked like a wall and ceiling, before it stopped responding to users. Naturally, the internet began to <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/17/snapchat-ai-went-rogue/">question</a> whether the ChatGPT-powered chatbot had gained sentience.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1691619754983768401"}"></div></p>
<p>A crash course in AI literacy could have quelled this confusion. But, beyond that, the incident reminds us that as AI chatbots grow closer to resembling humans, managing their uptake will only get more challenging – and more important.</p>
<h2>From rules-based to adaptive chatbots</h2>
<p>Since ChatGPT burst onto our screens late last year, many digital platforms have integrated AI into their services. Even as I draft this article on Microsoft Word, the software’s predictive AI capability is suggesting possible sentence completions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/google-and-microsoft-are-bringing-ai-to-word-excel-gmail-and-more-it-could-boost-productivity-for-us-and-cybercriminals-202046">Google and Microsoft are bringing AI to Word, Excel, Gmail and more. It could boost productivity for us – and cybercriminals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Known as generative AI, this relatively new type of AI is distinguished from its <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/three-ways-leverage-chatgpt-and-other-generative-ai-research">predecessors</a> by its ability to generate new content that is precise, human-like and seemingly meaningful. </p>
<p>Generative AI tools, including AI image generators and chatbots, are built on large language models (LLMs). These computational models analyse the associations between billions of words, sentences and paragraphs to predict what ought to come next in a given text. As OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever <a href="https://lifearchitect.ai/ilya/">puts it</a>, an LLM is</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] just a really, really good next-word predictor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Advanced LLMs are also fine-tuned with human feedback. This training, often delivered through countless hours of cheap human labour, is the reason AI chatbots can now have seemingly human-like conversations. </p>
<p>OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/">flagship generative AI model</a>. Its release marked a major leap from simpler “rules-based” chatbots, such as those used in online customer service.</p>
<p>Human-like chatbots that talk <em>to</em> a user rather than <em>at</em> them have been linked with higher levels of engagement. One <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mcb/josm/2023/00000034/00000004/art00008">study</a> found the personification of chatbots leads to increased engagement which, over time, may turn into psychological
dependence. Another study involving <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3579505">stressed participants</a> found a human-like chatbot was more likely to be perceived as competent, and therefore more likely to help reduce participants’ stress.</p>
<p>These chatbots have also been effective in fulfilling organisational objectives in various settings, including retail, education, workplace and <a href="https://www.latrobe.edu.au/mylatrobe/using-ai-for-good-la-trobe-phd-student-builds-new-chatbot-to-help-improve-students-mental-health/">healthcare settings</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-cost-of-the-ai-boom-social-and-environmental-exploitation-208669">The hidden cost of the AI boom: social and environmental exploitation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Google is using generative AI to build a “personal life coach” that will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/technology/google-ai-life-advice.html">supposedly help</a> people with various personal and professional tasks, including providing life advice and answering intimate questions. </p>
<p>This is despite Google’s own AI safety experts warning that users could grow too dependant on AI and may experience “diminished health and wellbeing” and a “loss of agency” if they take life advice from it.</p>
<h2>Friend or foe – or just a bot?</h2>
<p>In the recent Snapchat incident, the company put the whole thing down to a “<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/16/snapchats-my-ai-goes-rogue-posts-to-stories-but-snap-confirms-it-was-just-a-glitch/">temporary outage</a>”. We may never know what actually happened; it could be yet another example of AI “hallucinatng”, or the result of a cyberattack, or even just an operational error.</p>
<p>Either way, the speed with which some users assumed the chatbot had achieved sentience suggests we are seeing an unprecedented anthropomorphism of AI. It’s compounded by a lack of transparency from developers, and a lack of basic understanding among the public.</p>
<p>We shouldn’t underestimate how individuals may be misled by the apparent authenticity of human-like chatbots. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, a Belgian man’s suicide <a href="https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/killer-ai-belgian-man-commits-suicide-after-week-long-chats-with-ai-bot-11680263872023.html">was attributed</a> to conversations he’d had with a chatbot about climate inaction and the planet’s future. In another example, a chatbot named Tessa <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/eating-disorder-hotline-union-ai-chatbot-harm">was found to be</a> offering harmful advice to people through an eating disorder helpline. </p>
<p>Chatbots may be particularly harmful to the more vulnerable among us, and especially to those with psychological conditions.</p>
<h2>A new uncanny valley?</h2>
<p>You may have heard of the “uncanny valley” effect. It refers to that uneasy feeling you get when you see a humanoid robot that <em>almost</em> looks human, but its slight imperfections give it away, and it ends up being creepy. </p>
<p>It seems a similar experience is emerging in our interactions with human-like chatbots. A <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2383850-gpt-4-is-the-ai-behind-chatgpt-getting-worse/">slight blip</a> can raise the hairs on the back of the neck. </p>
<p>One solution might be to lose the human edge and revert to chatbots that are straightforward, objective and factual. But this would come at the expense of engagement and innovation. </p>
<h2>Education and transparency are key</h2>
<p>Even the developers of advanced AI chatbots often can’t explain how they work. Yet in some ways (and as far as commercial entities are concerned) the benefits outweigh the risks.</p>
<p>Generative AI has <a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun">demonstrated its usefulness</a> in big-ticket items such as productivity, healthcare, education and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-chatgpt-might-be-able-to-help-the-worlds-poorest-and-the-organisations-that-work-with-them-203287">even social equity</a>. It’s unlikely to go away. So how do we make it work for us?</p>
<p>Since 2018, there has been a significant push for governments and organisations to address the risks of AI. But applying <a href="https://www.itu.int/hub/2023/07/a-call-to-action-for-inclusive-safe-and-responsible-ai/">responsible standards and regulations</a> to a technology that’s more “human-like” than any other comes with a host of challenges.</p>
<p>Currently, there is no legal requirement for Australian businesses to disclose the use of chatbots. In the US, California has introduced a “bot bill” that would require this, but legal experts have <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/law-makes-bots-identify-themselves/">poked holes in it</a> – and the bill has yet to be enforced at the time of writing this article.</p>
<p>Moreover, ChatGPT and similar chatbots are made public as “<a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plus">research previews</a>”. This means they often come with multiple disclosures on their prototypical nature, and the onus for responsible use falls on the user.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20230601STO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence">European Union’s AI Act</a>, the world’s first comprehensive regulation on AI, has identified moderate regulation and education as the path forward – since excess regulation could stunt innovation. Similar to digital literacy, AI literacy should be mandated in schools, universities and organisations, and should also be made free and accessible for the public.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-we-need-a-new-law-for-ai-sure-but-first-we-could-try-enforcing-the-laws-we-already-have-211369">Do we need a new law for AI? Sure – but first we could try enforcing the laws we already have</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daswin de Silva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Snapchat’s AI-powered chatbot malfunctioned this week, raising questions of “sentience” among users. As AI becomes increasingly human-like, society must become AI-literate.Daswin de Silva, Deputy Director of the Centre for Data Analytics and Cognition, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110232023-08-10T12:40:57Z2023-08-10T12:40:57ZElon Musk aims to turn Twitter into an ‘everything app’ – a social media and marketing scholar explains what that is and why it’s not so easy to do<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541573/original/file-20230807-27645-si5z9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C73%2C2095%2C1314&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Everything apps are designed to help you do, well, just about everything you do on a phone.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/businessman-working-with-laptop-computer-and-royalty-free-image/876409758?adppopup=true">Busakorn Pongparnit/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elon Musk’s recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dunkin-and-lego-rebrands-succeeded-but-x-missed-the-mark-210432">rebranding of Twitter as X</a> is a step toward the CEO’s goal of developing an “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/25/musk-says-x-name-change-is-a-result-of-his-push-to-build-an-everything-app/?sh=579d990a75a1">everything app</a>.” <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/06/21/elon-musk-and-the-super-alluring-dream-for-a-super-app/?sh=322db5f91343">Musk’s vision</a> is for X to mark the spot for all your digital needs – to chat with your friends, order groceries, watch videos and manage your finances, all on one platform.</p>
<p>His recent announcement might have left you wondering what an everything app is and whether you need really one. If everything apps are so great, why isn’t there one that’s widely used in the U.S. already?</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/kristen-schiele">someone who studies</a> how consumers use social media and <a href="https://www.stukent.com/higher-ed/mobile-marketing-textbook">what that means for digital marketing</a>, I find the idea of an everything app intriguing. I think that an everything app has the potential to be widely adopted in the U.S. if it’s well designed and is valuable to its users. But there are lots of obstacles standing in the way of success – from data privacy concerns to building a larger user base.</p>
<h2>What is an everything app?</h2>
<p>An everything app, also known as a “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/06/21/elon-musk-and-the-super-alluring-dream-for-a-super-app/?sh=4d42e1b61343">super app</a>,” provides a wide range of features – from social networking to online shopping and financial services. Essentially it’s a fusion of many apps you may often use, like Instagram, Uber, WhatsApp and PayPal.</p>
<p>The intended goal of an everything app is to simplify daily tasks by saving time and effort needed to use multiple platforms. Through partnerships with third-party servicers, everything apps create an ecosystem where users can switch between different tasks without having to leave the app or install any others on their devices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A hand holding a phone displaying an app store page for WeChat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541576/original/file-20230807-27-1hket1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Everything apps, like WeChat, let users share photos with friends and pay bills, all in a single platform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/illustration-wechat-suqian-city-jiangsu-province-china-july-news-photo/1526471417?adppopup=true">Future Publishing/Future Publishing via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Over the past few years, everything apps have <a href="https://gmo-research.com/news-events/articles/rise-super-apps#:%7E:text=Super%20apps%20have%20become%20increasingly,services%20into%20the%20single%20app">gained popularity</a>, particularly in some Asian countries, as users appreciate the increased efficiency and convenience of having all their contacts and favorite app features in the same place.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wechat.com/en/">WeChat</a>, known as Weixin in China, is considered one of the first successful everything apps. This multifunctional app offers communication services – messaging, calling and social media – as well as many financial services, like mobile payment for peer-to-peer transactions and WeChat Pay, which helps users manage bill payments and investments.</p>
<p>WeChat’s <a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/9085/wechat/#topicOverview">widespread popularity</a> has transformed the way people in China communicate and conduct daily tasks. It has become an essential app for <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts">over 1 billion users</a> and is an <a href="https://daxueconsulting.com/wechat-marketing/">important marketing tool</a> for many businesses.</p>
<p>Other examples of everything apps include <a href="https://line.me/en/">Line</a> in Japan and <a href="https://www.kakaocorp.com/page/service/service/KakaoTalk?lang=en">KakaoTalk</a> in South Korea.</p>
<h2>Privacy and security concerns</h2>
<p>But the very thing that makes an everything app so appealing – putting everything in one place – is also a source of concern. </p>
<p>In order to function, an everything app needs to collect an <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-smartphone-apps-are-tracking-your-every-move-4-essential-reads-108586">extensive amount of data</a>, including your personal information, your contact lists, <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-mobile-phone-can-give-away-your-location-even-if-you-tell-it-not-to-65443">your location</a> and even how much you use the app.</p>
<p>Users are often not fully aware of how much of <a href="https://theconversation.com/data-privacy-laws-in-the-us-protect-profit-but-prevent-sharing-data-for-public-good-people-want-the-opposite-166320">their data is collected and shared</a>. When was the last time you carefully read through an app’s privacy policy? Some apps retain data for extended periods of time, even after a user has abandoned the app. Storing so much data in one place also increases the risk of a breach.</p>
<p>This extensive amount of tracking raises concerns about surveillance and user profiling, especially in countries with weak data protection laws. An everything app may be subject to <a href="https://citizenlab.ca/2023/06/privacy-in-the-wechat-ecosystem-full-report">government surveillance and data requests</a>, further compromising users’ privacy. The app may also share this data with third-party service providers.</p>
<p>WeChat <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-is-bad-but-wechat-is-worse-china-social-media-data-censorship-spying-ccp-app-mass-surveillance-11674593345">has been criticized</a> for its data collection, political censoring and surveillance. <a href="https://citizenlab.ca/2023/06/privacy-in-the-wechat-ecosystem-full-report">Research has found</a> that WeChat complies with government and police requests for data and information, so it can be used as a surveillance tool and for content censorship. Some countries <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/world/asia/tik-tok-banned-india-china.html">have banned</a> or <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australian-lawmakers-recommend-potential-wechat-ban-govt-devices-2023-08-01">are considering banning</a> WeChat because of security concerns. </p>
<p>To address privacy concerns, I believe everything apps need to be transparent about their data collection practices. Users will be more open to embracing an everything app if they have the means to manage their privacy settings and delete their data.</p>
<h2>Building a user base</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to predict <a href="https://theconversation.com/metas-threads-is-surging-but-mass-migration-from-twitter-is-likely-to-remain-an-uphill-battle-209367">whether an app will take off</a>. Advertising can motivate someone to download an app, but word of mouth is often far more effective. As you see more of your friends join a specific social media platform, you might be more tempted to download that app so you don’t miss out.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young people sitting looking at phones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541574/original/file-20230807-25-a9aav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There’s a social component to whether or not an app finds success.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/diverse-young-teenage-students-having-fun-using-royalty-free-image/1371288493?adppopup=true">Xavier Lorenzo/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Good security and privacy aren’t enough to build a strong user base – the app also needs to be easy to use. While the goal of the app is to put everything in one place, some users may feel alienated by a confusing or cluttered interface. Familiar icons, navigation and terminology can help users feel more comfortable and encourage them to use the app more. </p>
<p>In addition, an app with so many features requires lots of resources, like storage and processing power. Users with older mobile devices may be frustrated with slow loading times or buggy responsiveness, pushing them away from using an everything app. </p>
<p>There’s also the possibility that some U.S. users may not buy into the idea of an everything app. Although integrating finances into WeChat has been successful in China, where <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243879/china-mobile-payment-penetration-rate">more than 84% of adults use mobile payments</a>, it may not be as easily accepted in the U.S., where <a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/982/mobile-payments">less than 33% of adults use mobile payments</a> and previous attempts to connect social features with finances have failed. Just look at Snapchat, which <a href="https://mashable.com/article/snapchat-shuts-down-snapcash">shut down Snapcash</a> in 2018. Even if developers managed to build the perfect everything app, there may be some people who just won’t want it – especially if that app is held by a private company subject to the whims of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/23/23651151/twitter-advertisers-elon-musk-brands-revenue-fleeing">controversial owner</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/twitter-users-reach-breaking-point-elon-musk-rcna62403">like Musk</a>.</p>
<p>So where does this leave X? The app has a long way to go before it <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/06/21/elon-musk-and-the-super-alluring-dream-for-a-super-app/?sh=322db5f91343">becomes an everything app</a>, and Musk’s many changes to the platform <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/26/8-facts-about-americans-and-twitter-as-it-rebrands-to-x/">already have</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/twitter-lose-users-elon-musk-takeover-hate-speech">users jumping ship</a> in search of a Twitter substitute. But, whether it’s X or not, I think there’s certainly room in the U.S. for an everything app to move in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristen Schiele is affiliated with Marketing Educators Association. </span></em></p>Everything apps offer a wide range of features, combining social media with personal finances. But creating the perfect everything app is no easy task.Kristen Schiele, Associate Professor of Clinical Marketing, University of Southern CaliforniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2033832023-04-14T16:06:55Z2023-04-14T16:06:55ZHow beauty filters like TikTok’s ‘bold glamour’ affect tweens using social media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519652/original/file-20230405-16-jn5lwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5398%2C3563&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teenagers using social media filters. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/three-teenage-girls-lying-on-bed-787007248">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a43203022/tiktok-bold-glamour-filter/">TikTok’s new “bold glamour” filter</a> “enhances” physical features in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish whether someone is using a filter or not, despite its airbrushing qualities.</p>
<p>Unlike its predecessors, this filter allows movement through an AI feature with the filter remaining fixed on when, for example, a hand crosses the face, with fewer glitches. </p>
<p>Users could be left comparing their unfiltered appearance with their “perfect” filtered self. They may start to develop unrealistic goals of perceived physical perfection that affect their self esteem. </p>
<p>Although the terms of service for most social media platforms require users to be at least 13, a significant number of “tweens” (children between the ages of nine and 12) <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2022">now have a social media profile</a>.</p>
<p>Online safety lessons in schools <a href="https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Childrens-Commissioner-for-England-Life-in-Likes-3.pdf">tend to concentrate</a> on physical risk and predatory behaviour rather than emotional risks that children may encounter, as these may not be as apparent or experienced by adults.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1640275766100279296"}"></div></p>
<p>The <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444819873644">damaging effect of “filters”</a> (digital image effects that alter a person’s appearance) is less commonly taught.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KXDECXZB3CVNZNDHNURF/full?target=10.1080/03004279.2022.2095416">In my research</a>, I presented eight focus groups with activities to generate discussions with children of 10 and 11 years of age who were in their final year of primary school. One of the activities was related to the use of filters.</p>
<p>Participants were given a set of photographs of people using filters on the social media site Snapchat and were asked questions such as: “How are these different from how they look in real life?” and “why do people use these filters?”</p>
<p>The results demonstrated a clear and distinct gender divide. The boys said they used filters for fun and entertainment, favouring dog ears and exaggerated tongues to “make people laugh”. The girls used filters to create an idealised image that conformed to beauty ideals and for validation in the form of likes and comments.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young woman uses a filter to add pink ears to her photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519654/original/file-20230405-22-c3mgqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Snapchat filters are now a daily part of life for many tweens and teens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/moscow-russia-may-24-2019-snapchat-1444040960">Zyabich/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>One girl, Samantha, said: “[filters] make you look perfect and flawless”. Another explained: “I like putting filters on because it doesn’t show my birthmark at all. It takes the blemishes off my face”. </p>
<p>Similarly, tween Mia explained: “when you put a filter on, it makes your skin tone better and it covers up any spots or like any bruises and stuff that you feel insecure about in yourself.”</p>
<p>My findings suggest that girls are internalising and aspiring to the beauty ideals that they are consuming via social media. There is a pressure to adopt a polished, physical appearance through filters, which may have <a href="http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/82913/3/__smbhome.uscs.susx.ac.uk_dm50_Desktop_Jaynes%20V.pdf">emotional repercussions</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Beauty isn’t everything’</h2>
<p>I also used collaging as an activity for exploring individual experiences. One child, Sophie, chose to show a binary depiction of herself as two halves. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A child's drawing is split down the middle to show two halves of her personality." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519648/original/file-20230405-20-xj9qzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sophie’s collage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the social media side, she used lots of different animal prints in triangles to show that you can be lots of different things and there are lots of different parts of yourself.</p>
<p>She explained that the patterns she had chosen looked unnatural, unlike the more realistic filters online. </p>
<p>Because (like other females in the study) she felt that there is an expectation for girls to look a certain way, Sophie also wrote “no one is perfect” on her collage.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing of two girls surrounded by phrases related to filters." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519649/original/file-20230405-1712-cfeumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Karen’s collage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the girls in my research, there was a sense that self expression was strongly linked to appearance, with a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26612721/">pressure to adhere</a> to certain perceived physical ideals.</p>
<p>In her collage, Karen discussed at length how social media can be an augmented reality and can emphasise feelings of self consciousness linked to physical appearance.</p>
<p>The characters drawn on her collage show a “real-life” self that had no filter, which “makes her sad” and a “filter self” which used make up and filters to enhance her appearance and made her happy. </p>
<p>She also emphasised the feelings of negative self-esteem that viewing filtered images could have by saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People try and make themselves look beautiful and at the end it may really disappoint them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444819871669?journalCode=nmsa">Similar research from 2020</a> also concluded that girls tend to replicate “female” cues popularised through social media patterns, such as exaggerated lips and flawless skin. </p>
<p>Although my research specifically focused on Snapchat, other social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram also encourage enhancing appearance through filters.</p>
<p>Beauty filters reinforce the message that wearing makeup, looking a certain way and conforming to beauty ideals, is the desired physical state for women. Isabel had a strong message for girls in her collage: “be your own person and stop comparing yourself to others”.</p>
<p>The widespread use of filters is certainly not facilitating this message and it is important that the emotional repercussions of using these appearance altering tools – as well as continually seeing them in social media feeds – is addressed. </p>
<p>Open discussions could help educate girls to learn that these unattainable physical aspirations do not represent reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203383/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Pescott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The damaging effect of social media filters is rarely taught in schools.Claire Pescott, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1893102022-09-06T20:06:12Z2022-09-06T20:06:12ZHow dark is ‘dark advertising’? We audited Facebook, Google and other platforms to find out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482896/original/file-20220906-12-ewa20l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C333%2C2592%2C2727&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ashkar Dave / Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Once upon a time, most advertisements were public. If we wanted to see what advertisers were doing, we could easily find it – on TV, in newspapers and magazines, and on billboards around the city. </p>
<p>This meant governments, civil society and citizens could keep advertisers in check, especially when they advertised products that might be harmful – such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pharmaceuticals, financial services or unhealthy food. </p>
<p>However, the rise of online ads has led to a kind of “dark advertising”. Ads are often only visible to their intended targets, they disappear moments after they have been seen, and no one except the platforms knows how, when, where or why the ads appear. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://fare.org.au/transparency-report/">new study</a> conducted for the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), we audited the advertising transparency of seven major digital platforms. The results were grim: none of the platforms are transparent enough for the public to understand what advertising they publish, and how it is targeted.</p>
<h2>Why does transparency matter?</h2>
<p>Dark ads on digital platforms shape public life. They have been used to spread <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/313053">political falsehoods</a>, <a href="https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/07/09/facebook-got-rid-of-racial-ad-categories-or-did-it">target racial groups</a>, and perpetuate <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-ads-can-still-discriminate-against-women-and-older-workers-despite-a-civil-rights-settlement">gender bias</a>. </p>
<p>Dark advertising on digital platforms is also a problem when it comes to addictive and harmful products such as alcohol, gambling and unhealthy food. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-ads-have-enabled-discrimination-based-on-gender-race-and-age-we-need-to-know-how-dark-ads-affect-australians-168938">Facebook ads have enabled discrimination based on gender, race and age. We need to know how ‘dark ads’ affect Australians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/media-and-resources/media-releases/dark-marketing-tactics-of-harmful-industries-exposed-by-young-citizen-scientists">recent study</a> with VicHealth, we found age-restricted products such as alcohol and gambling were targeted to people under the age of 18 on digital platforms. At present, however, there is no way to systematically monitor what kinds of alcohol and gambling advertisements children are seeing. </p>
<p>Advertisements are optimised to drive engagement, such as through clicks or purchases, and target people who are the most likely to engage. For example, people identified as high-volume alcohol consumers will likely receive more alcohol ads. </p>
<p>This optimisation can have extreme results. A <a href="https://fare.org.au/alcohol-ad-every-35-seconds-during-covid-19/">study</a> by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) and Cancer Council WA found one user received 107 advertisements for alcohol products on Facebook and Instagram in a single hour on a Friday night in April 2020.</p>
<h2>How transparent is advertising on digital platforms?</h2>
<p>We evaluated the transparency of advertising on major digital platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Google search, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok – by asking the following nine questions: </p>
<ul>
<li>is there a comprehensive and permanent archive of all the ads published on the platform?</li>
<li>can the archive be accessed using an application programming interface (API)?</li>
<li>is there a public searchable dashboard that is updated in real time?</li>
<li>are ads stored in the archive permanently?</li>
<li>can we access deleted advertisements?</li>
<li>can we download the ads for analysis?</li>
<li>are we able to see what types of users the ad targeted?</li>
<li>how much did it cost to run the advertisement?</li>
<li>can we tell how many people the advertisement reached?</li>
</ul>
<p>All platforms included in our evaluation failed to meet basic transparency criteria, meaning advertising on the platform is not observable by civil society, researchers or regulators. For the most part, advertising can only be seen by its targets.</p>
<p>Notably, TikTok had no transparency measures at all to allow observation of advertising on the platform. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482707/original/file-20220905-20-vg8uvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advertising transparency on these major digital platforms leaves a lot to be desired.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fare.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Transparency-Report.pdf">From 'Advertisements on digital platforms: How transparent and observable are they?'</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other platforms weren’t much better, with none offering a comprehensive or permanent advertising archive. This means that once an advertising campaign has ended, there is no way to observe what ads were disseminated. </p>
<p>Facebook and Instagram are the only platforms to publish a list of all currently active advertisements. However, most of these ads are deleted after the campaign becomes inactive and are no longer observable.</p>
<p>Platforms also fail to provide contextual information for advertisements, such as advertising spend and reach, or how advertisements are being targeted. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/transparency-reports-from-tech-giants-are-vague-on-how-theyre-combating-misinformation-its-time-for-legislation-184476">'Transparency reports' from tech giants are vague on how they're combating misinformation. It's time for legislation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Without this information, it is difficult to understand who is being targeted with advertising on these platforms. For example, we can’t be sure companies selling harmful and addictive products aren’t targeting children or people recovering from addiction. Platforms and advertisers ask us to simply trust them.</p>
<p>We did find platforms are starting to provide some information on one narrowly defined category of advertising: “issues, elections or politics”. This shows there is no technical reason for keeping information about other kinds of advertising from the public. Rather, platforms are choosing to keep it secret. </p>
<h2>Bringing advertising back into public view</h2>
<p>When digital advertising can be systematically monitored, it will be possible to hold digital platforms and marketers accountable for their business practices.</p>
<p>Our assessment of advertising transparency on digital platforms demonstrates that they are not currently observable or accountable to the public. Consumers, civil society, regulators and even advertisers all have a stake in ensuring a stronger public understanding of how the dark advertising models of digital platforms operate. </p>
<p>The limited steps platforms have taken to create public archives, particularly in the case of political advertising, demonstrate that change is possible. And the detailed dashboards about ad performance they offer advertisers illustrate there are no technical barriers to accountability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Carah is Deputy Chair of Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education. Nicholas receives funding from the Australian Research Council, VicHealth and Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aimee Brownbill is Senior Policy and Research Advisor at the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Dobson receives funding from the Australian Research Council (LPLP190101051 DPDP220100152), VicHealth, and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brady Robards receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE190100858, LP190101051, SR200200364), VicHealth, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Department of Education, Skills & Employment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Angus receives funding from Australian Research Council through Discovery Projects DP200100519 ‘Using machine vision to explore Instagram’s everyday promotional cultures’, DP200101317 ‘Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation’, and Linkage Project LP190101051 'Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media'. He is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society, CE200100005.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kiah Hawker, Lauren Hayden, and Xue Ying Tan do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>None of the major digital platforms lets the public see what advertising they carry and how it’s targeted, according to a new report.Nicholas Carah, Associate Professor in Digital Media, The University of QueenslandAimee Brownbill, Honorary Fellow, Public Health, The University of QueenslandAmy Shields Dobson, Lecturer in Digital and Social Media, Curtin UniversityBrady Robards, Associate Professor in Sociology, Monash UniversityDaniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyKiah Hawker, Assistant researcher, Digital Media, The University of QueenslandLauren Hayden, PhD Candidate and Research Assistant, The University of QueenslandXue Ying Tan, Software Engineer, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1695202021-10-18T14:40:23Z2021-10-18T14:40:23ZWhy Facebook and other social media companies need to be reined in<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426552/original/file-20211014-26-yxj8cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C2968%2C1989&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> released <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039">the Facebook Files</a>. Drawing on thousands of documents leaked by whistle blower and former employee Frances Haugen, the Facebook Files show that the company knows their practices harm young people, but fails to act, choosing corporate profit over public good. </p>
<p>The Facebook Files are damning for the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. However, it isn’t the only social media company that compromises young people’s internationally protected rights and well-being by prioritizing profits. </p>
<p>As researchers and experts on <a href="http://www.equalityproject.ca/research/research-publications/">children’s rights</a>, <a href="https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/initiatives/equality">online privacy and equality</a> and the <a href="https://le.ac.uk/media/research/featured-projects/digital-sexual-cultures-feminist-research-and-engagement-consortium">online risks, harms and rewards</a> that young people face, the news over the past few weeks didn’t surprise us.</p>
<h2>Harvested personal data</h2>
<p>Harvesting and commodifying personal data (including children’s data) underpins the <a href="https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/25885539.pdf">internet financial model</a> — a model that social psychologist and philosopher Shoshana Zuboff has dubbed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy">surveillance capitalism </a>. </p>
<p>Social media companies make money under this model by collecting, analyzing and selling the personal information of users. To increase the flow of this valuable data they work to engage more people, for more time, through more interactions. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-surveillance-capitalism-and-how-does-it-shape-our-economy-119158">Explainer: what is surveillance capitalism and how does it shape our economy?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ultimately, the value in harvested personal data lies in the detailed personal profiles the data supports — profiles that are used to feed the algorithms that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/how-the-facebook-news-feed-algorithm-shapes-your-friendships/64996/">shape our newsfeeds</a>, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18124718/google-search-results-personalized-unique-duckduckgo-filter-bubble">personalize our search results</a>, help <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkekvb/cost-cutting-algorithms-are-making-your-job-search-a-living-hell">us get a job</a> (or hinder) and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-targeted-ads-are-more-complex-than-it-lets-on/">determine the advertisements we receive</a>. </p>
<p>In a self-reinforcing turn, these same data are used to shape our online environments to encourage disclosure of even more data — and the process repeats. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A desktop shows a man with binoculars that have the Facebook F on them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426551/original/file-20211014-21-1qjm5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Social media companies monitor young people to bombard them with unsolicited content in service of corporate profits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Glen Carrie/Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Surveillance capitalism</h2>
<p>Recent <a href="https://5rightsfoundation.com/uploads/Pathways-how-digital-design-puts-children-at-risk.pdf">research confirms that the deliberate design, algorithmic and policy choices</a> made by social media companies (that lie at the heart of surveillance capitalism) directly expose young people to harmful content. However, the harms of <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/">surveillance capitalism</a> extend well beyond this.</p>
<p>Our research in both Canada and the United Kingdom has repeatedly uncovered young people’s concern with how social media companies and policy-makers are failing them. Rather than respecting young people’s rights to expression, to be free from discrimination and to participate in decisions affecting themselves, social media companies monitor young people to bombard them with unsolicited content in service of corporate profits. </p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://press.uottawa.ca/egirls-ecitizens.html">young people have often reported to us</a> that they feel pressured to conform to stereotypical profiles used to steer their behaviour and shape their environment for profit.</p>
<p>For example, teen girls have told us that even though using Instagram and Snapchat created anxiety and insecurity about their bodies, they found it almost impossible to “switch off” the platforms. They also told us how the limited protection provided by default privacy settings leaves them vulnerable to unwanted “dick pics” and requests to send intimate images to men they don’t know. </p>
<p>Several girls and their parents told us that this can sometimes lead to extreme outcomes, including <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-your-adult-child-breaks-your-heart/201709/understanding-school-refusal">school refusal</a>, self harm and, in a few cases, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0000000000000547">attempting suicide</a>. </p>
<p>The surveillance capitalism financial model that underlies social media ensures that companies do everything they can to keep young people engaged. </p>
<p>Young people have told us that they want more freedom and control when using these spaces — so they are as public or private as they like, without fear of being monitored or profiled, or that their data are being farmed out to corporations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young girl lays in bed, sad on her phone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426569/original/file-20211014-28-1ro5v9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teen girls have told us that even though using Instagram and Snapchat created anxiety and insecurity about their bodies, they found it almost impossible to ‘switch off’ the platforms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Teenagers also told us how they rarely bother to report harmful content to the platforms. This isn’t because they don’t know how, but instead because they <a href="http://www.lco-cdo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DIA-Commissioned-Paper-eQuality.pdf">have learned from experience that it doesn’t help</a>. Some platforms were too slow to respond, others didn’t respond at all and some said that what was reported didn’t breach community standards, so they weren’t willing to help. </p>
<h2>Removing toxic content hurts the bottom line</h2>
<p>These responses aren’t surprising. For years, we have known about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/25/facebook-moderator-underpaid-overburdened-extreme-content">lack of resources</a> to moderate content and deal with online harassment. </p>
<p>Haugen’s recent testimony at a <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20online:%20testimony%20from%20a%20facebook%20whistleblower">Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation</a> hearing and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignored-warnings-letting-toxic-videos-run-rampant">earlier reports about other social media platforms</a> highlight an even deeper profit motivation. Profit depends on meaningful social engagement, and harmful, toxic and divisive content drives engagement. </p>
<p>Basically, removing toxic content would hurt the corporate bottom line. </p>
<h2>Guiding principles that centre children’s rights</h2>
<p>So, what should be done in light of the recent, though not unprecedented, revelations in the Facebook Files? The issues are undoubtedly complex, but we have come up with a list of guiding principles that centre children’s rights and prioritize what young people have told us about what they need:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Young people must be directly engaged in the development of relevant policy. </p></li>
<li><p>All related policy initiatives should be evaluated on an ongoing basis using a children’s rights assessment framework.</p></li>
<li><p>Social media companies should be stopped from launching products for children and from collecting their data for profiling purposes.</p></li>
<li><p>Governments should invest more resources into providing fast, free, easy-to-access informal responses and support for those targeted by online harms (learning from existing models like Australia’s <a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/">eSafety Commissioner</a> and Nova Scotia’s <a href="https://novascotia.ca/cyberscan/">CyberScan unit</a>).</p></li>
<li><p>We need laws that ensure that social media companies are both transparent and accountable, especially when it comes to content moderation.</p></li>
<li><p>Government agencies (including police) should enforce existing laws against hateful, sexually violent and harassing content. Thought should be given to expanding platform liability for provoking and perpetuating these kinds of content. </p></li>
<li><p>Educational initiatives should prioritize familiarizing young people, the adults who support them and corporations with children’s rights, rather than focusing on a “safety” discourse that makes young people responsible for their own protection. This way, we can work together to disrupt the surveillance capitalism model that endangers them in the first place.</p></li>
</ol><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaitlynn Mendes receives funding from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/W000423/1)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacquelyn Burkell receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Bailey receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Valerie Steeves receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.</span></em></p>What can and should be done in light of response to the Facebook Files? The issues are undoubtedly complex, but solutions need to centre on children’s rights and prioritize what young people need.Kaitlynn Mendes, Professor of Gender, Media and Sociology, Western UniversityJacquelyn Burkell, Associate Professor, Information and Media Studies, Western UniversityJane Bailey, Professor of Law and Co-Leader of The eQuality Project, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaValerie Steeves, Full Professor, Department of Criminology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1556132021-04-05T12:36:41Z2021-04-05T12:36:41ZHow social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393384/original/file-20210405-19-cxu2bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C6%2C4495%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Comments and livestreams can lead to physical fights, shootings and even death.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-the-instagram-clubhouse-whatsapp-news-photo/1231819878?adppopup=true">Photo illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The deadly <a href="https://theconversation.com/was-it-a-coup-no-but-siege-on-us-capitol-was-the-election-violence-of-a-fragile-democracy-152803">insurrection at the U.S. Capitol</a> in January exposed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-activists-on-social-media-telegraphed-violence-weeks-in-advance-of-the-attack-on-the-us-capitol-152861">power of social media</a> to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. But many adolescents, who spend <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/">more time on social media</a> than all other age groups, have known this for years. </p>
<p>“On social media, when you argue, something so small can turn into something so big so fast,” said Justin, a 17-year-old living in Hartford, Connecticut, during one of my research focus groups. (The participants’ names have been changed in this article to protect their identities.)</p>
<p>For the last three years, I have studied how and why <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YsvEJFoAAAAJ&hl=en">social media triggers and accelerates offline violence</a>. <a href="https://ssw.uconn.edu/person/caitlin-elsaesser-phd/">In my research</a>, conducted in partnership with Hartford-based peace initiative <a href="http://www.compassyc.org/">COMPASS Youth Collaborative</a>, we interviewed dozens of young people aged 12-19 in 2018. Their responses made clear that social media is not a neutral communication platform.</p>
<p>In other words, social media isn’t just mirroring conflicts happening in schools and on streets – it’s intensifying and triggering new conflicts. And for young people who live in disenfranchised urban neighborhoods, where firearms can be readily available, this dynamic can be deadly. </p>
<h2>Internet banging</h2>
<p>It can result in a phenomenon that <a href="https://techpolicypodcast.org/social-media-and-gang-violence/">researchers at Columbia University</a> have coined “internet banging.” Distinct from cyberbullying, internet banging involves taunts, disses and arguments on social media between people in rival crews, cliques or gangs. These exchanges can include comments, images and videos that lead to physical fights, shootings and, in the worst cases, <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/west-philadelphia-shootings-homicide-rates-instagram-feuds-20210316.html">death</a>.</p>
<p>It is estimated that the typical U.S. teen uses screen media <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens-2019">more than seven hours</a> daily, with the average teenager daily using three different forms of social media. Films such as “<a href="https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/">The Social Dilemma</a>” underscore that social media companies create addictive platforms by design, using features such as unlimited scrolling and push notifications to keep users endlessly engaged. </p>
<p>According to the young people we interviewed, four social media features in particular escalate conflicts: comments, livestreaming, picture/video sharing and tagging. </p>
<h2>Comments and livestreams</h2>
<p>The feature most frequently implicated in social media conflicts, according to our research with adolescents, was comments. Roughly 80% of the incidents they described involved comments, which allow social media users to respond publicly to content posted by others. </p>
<p>Taylor, 17, described how comments allow people outside her friend group to “hype up” online conflicts: “On Facebook if I have an argument, it would be mostly the outsiders that’ll be hypin’ us up … ‘Cause the argument could have been done, but you got outsiders being like, 'Oh, she gonna beat you up.’”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, livestreaming can quickly attract a large audience to watch conflict unfold in real time. Nearly a quarter of focus group participants implicated Facebook Live, for example, as a feature that escalates conflict.</p>
<p>Brianna, 17, shared an example in which her cousin told another girl to come to her house to fight on Facebook Live. “But mind you, if you got like 5,000 friends on Facebook, half of them watching … And most of them live probably in the area you live in. You got some people that’ll be like, ‘Oh, don’t fight.’ But in the majority, everybody would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, fight.’” </p>
<p>She went on to describe how three Facebook “friends” who were watching the livestream pulled up in cars in front of the house with cameras, ready to record and then post any fight. </p>
<h2>Strategies to stop violence</h2>
<p>Adolescents tend to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412471347">define themselves through peer groups</a> and are highly attuned to slights to their reputation. This makes it difficult to resolve social media conflicts peacefully. But the young people we spoke with are highly aware of how social media shapes the nature and intensity of conflicts. </p>
<p>A key finding of our work is that young people often try to avoid violence resulting from social media. Those in our study discussed four approaches to do so: avoidance, deescalation, reaching out for help and bystander intervention.</p>
<p>Avoidance involves exercising self-control to avoid conflict in the first place. As 17-year-old Diamond explained, “If I’m scrolling and I see something and I feel like I got to comment, I’ll go [to] comment and I’ll be like, ‘Hold up, wait, no.’ And I just start deleting it and tell myself … ‘No, mind my business.’” </p>
<p>Reaching out for support involves turning to peers, family or teachers for help. “When I see conflict, I screenshot it and send it to my friends in our group chat and laugh about it,” said Brianna, 16. But there’s a risk in this strategy, Brianna noted: “You could screenshot something on Snapchat, and it’ll tell the person that you screenshot it and they’ll be like, ‘Why are you screenshotting my stuff?’” </p>
<p>The deescalation strategy involves attempts by those involved to slow down a social media conflict as it happens. However, participants could not recount an example of this strategy working, given the intense pressure they experience from social media comments to protect one’s reputation.</p>
<p>They emphasized the bystander intervention strategy was most effective offline, away from the presence of an online audience. A friend might start a conversation offline with an involved friend to help strategize how to avoid future violence. Intervening online is often risky, according to participants, because the intervener can become a new target, ultimately making the conflict even bigger.</p>
<h2>Peer pressure goes viral</h2>
<p>Young people are all too aware that the number of comments a post garners, or how many people are watching a livestream, can make it extremely difficult to pull out of a conflict once it starts. </p>
<p>Jasmine, a 15-year-old, shared, “On Facebook, there be so many comments, so many shares and I feel like the other person would feel like they would be a punk if they didn’t step, so they step even though they probably, deep down, really don’t want to step.” </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-congress-tech/update-4-big-tech-ceos-told-time-for-self-regulation-is-over-by-us-lawmakers-idUSL1N2LN2JO">growing consensus</a> across both major U.S. political parties that the large technology companies behind social media apps need to be more tightly regulated. Much of the concern has focused on the <a href="https://time.com/5933989/facebook-oversight-regulating-social-media/">dangers of unregulated free speech</a>. </p>
<p>But from the vantage point of the adolescents we spoke with in Hartford, conflict that occurs on social media is also a public health threat. They described multiple experiences of going online without the intention to fight, and getting pulled into an online conflict that ended up in gun violence. Many young people are improvising strategies to avoid social media conflict. I believe parents, teachers, policymakers and social media engineers ought to listen closely to what they are saying.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Elsaesser receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</span></em></p>Social media isn’t just mirroring conflicts happening in schools and on streets – it’s intensifying and triggering new disputes.Caitlin Elsaesser, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1498762020-12-07T16:29:32Z2020-12-07T16:29:32Z‘I wish I was wearing a filter right now’: why tweens need more emotional support to deal with social media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373301/original/file-20201207-15-1bfuwur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/digital-technology-lifestyle-school-kid-using-619888097">Chinnapong/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many eight- to 12-year-olds are now heavy users of <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2018">social media</a> such as Instagram and Snapchat – even though most platforms require users <a href="https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Childrens-Commissioner-for-England-Life-in-Likes-3.pdf">to be 13</a> or over. However, concern over young people’s use of social media tends to focus on <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311650410_Use_of_Facebook_by_Children_Aged_10_-_12_Presence_in_Social_Media_Despite_the_Prohibition">older teenagers</a> or young adults – rather than this preteen or “tween” group – and concentrates on specific issues such as cyberbullying or sexting. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120965155">My new research</a> investigated tweens’ perceptions of social media and the issues they face when engaging with using these platforms. It reveals that while children are aware of dangers such as online predators, what tweens are being taught by parents and schools may overlook the emotional impact of social media.</p>
<h2>Online identity</h2>
<p>Children aged between eight and 12 are at a key time in their social and emotional development. At this point, they begin to seek social networks beyond their parents, with peer relationships taking on greater purpose and importance. </p>
<p>As they start to navigate the digital social world, tweens begin to form their online identity and are exposed to different circumstances to those they might encounter when socialising in real life. They may lack guidance in this space. Parents and teachers are not always “<a href="https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf">digital natives</a>” and may not be comfortable and confident when navigating the online world. This means they may not be equipped to safeguard tweens’ digital activity.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120965155">My research</a> took place in four primary schools in the South Wales area, with children aged ten and 11 years old. Of the 40 children involved in my study, 38 indicated that they had social media accounts, which suggests that the number of tweens using social media may be higher than previously thought. For instance, research carried out by Ofcom in 2019 reported that just 21% of eight to 11-year-olds had a <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/190616/children-media-use-attitudes-2019-report.pdf">social media profile</a>.</p>
<p>The children were split into eight focus groups with five children in each. I employed a variety of interactive activities to generate discussion. All groups were confident in giving a definition of what social media is: many gave similar answers such as “technically you communicate to other people” and “cos you can talk on it”. </p>
<p>The children discussed the use of emojis to communicate online, and showed awareness that using these symbols can come with problems. One participant said: “They can be false because you don’t always see someone’s face and you can’t see how they are feeling.”</p>
<p>Others talked about the aubergine and peach emojis being used as <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/01/18/what-do-the-aubergine-and-peach-emoji-mean-7240646/">rude symbols</a>, which they were aware was not suitable for their age. This could suggest that they are engaging in spaces and encountering conversations that are potentially not suitable for them. </p>
<p>The study also showed that parents and teachers had successfully passed messages about e-safety on to the tweens, in particular concerning known risks such as online predators. </p>
<p>In six out of the eight focus groups, children made specific reference to “catfishing” – luring someone into a relationship through a fictional online persona. “A 70-year-old man could go and like make an account as if they were 15,” one participant explained.</p>
<h2>Awareness of harm</h2>
<p>The children were able to talk about various strategies they used to protect themselves online. These included using privacy settings, not being photographed with their uniforms on, only being friends with people they knew in real life and using “ghost mode” on Snapchat – turning off a display of their location. </p>
<p>Some children also talked about their parents monitoring their social media use by being friends with them on social media apps, or by checking their private messages. </p>
<p>However, the most concerning results from this research involved the discussions about the use of Snapchat filters – digital overlays over photographs. There was a clear gender divide. Boys discussed how they use filters for fun and entertainment purposes, while girls in seven out of the eight focus groups commented on the fact that Snapchat filters were often used to “make you look prettier” and to enhance your appearance.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1057801932331466752"}"></div></p>
<p>The tweens talked of using filters for contouring and making your cheek bones more prominent, as well as making your skin look flawless. One child said that the changing of your appearance is not just for your own feeling of self-worth, but “to make people interested in them”, illustrating that popularity online is to do with appearance rather than personality. “I wish I was wearing a filter right now,” one girl said.</p>
<p>The girls in the study did show <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S174014451730102X">an awareness of issues</a> surrounding body images and recognised that these could be harmful to their self-esteem. Lessons in school, though, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120965155">tend to focus</a> on physical risk in e-safety talks rather than emotional issues. </p>
<p>It is clear that some messages on social medial safety are reaching tweens. However, socialising in a digital world can be dangerous in a variety of ways – and information on topics affecting children may be being overlooked. In particular, altered photographs may be influencing how children view themselves and this may <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216307051">affect their body image</a>. </p>
<p>My research suggests that primary schools children need to be taught about emotional safety in relation to social media. And that children’s perspectives need to feed into the digital curriculum, so it focuses on the issues that really affect them and not those that adults think are prevalent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Pescott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children aged eight to 12 need to understand the dangers of social media aren’t just from online predators.Claire Pescott, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1445412020-08-26T12:22:46Z2020-08-26T12:22:46ZTikTok is a unique blend of social media platforms – here’s why kids love it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354464/original/file-20200824-14-674d5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4913%2C3275&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people creating a TikTok video in Lithuania.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-local-social-media-star-the-trending-gang-dance-news-photo/1228117350?adppopup=true">Photo by Alfredas Pliadis/Xinhua via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>TikTok, a social media platform targeted at young mobile phone users, was the <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-most-downloaded-apps/">second-most downloaded app in the world</a> in 2019. It was the <a href="https://sensortower.com/blog/top-apps-worldwide-july-2020-by-downloads">most downloaded app</a> in July 2020.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sdMlz0kAAAAJ&hl=en">political scientist</a> who studies social media, I’ve looked at what makes TikTok unique and why young people have flocked to it. In short, the phone-only app lets users record themselves dancing or goofing around to a music or spoken-word clip and then alter the videos using a wide array of effects. Despite its superficially frivolous nature, young people have been using the platform to <a href="http://www.favstats.eu/docs/political_tiktok">send political messages</a>, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-rally-tiktok-crowds-tulsa/">coordinate political actions</a> and hang out in an online space largely free of adults.</p>
<h2>How it works</h2>
<p>Each tiktok is a 3- to 60-second-long video that loops when finished. The majority of the screen is taken up by the video uploaded by the user. The app offers a wide range of options for customizing and combining these videos, including video taken with the user’s smartphone, photos uploaded from the web, emojis and other text superimposed on the video, and special effects. The app’s library of filters and video-distorting effects is like Instagram filters but for video. </p>
<p>The bottom of the screen contains information about the “sound”: the audio file that accompanies the video. These “sounds” can either be user-uploaded or chosen from a library of popular sounds. This library contains both snippets of songs by professional musicians and silly recordings of people talking. “Sounds” have had a huge impact on the music industry: “Old Town Road,” one of the most popular songs of all time, <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/old-town-road-lil-nas-x-memes-explained">first gained popularity</a> as a TikTok “sound” with an associated dance. </p>
<p>When you open the app, you encounter a tiktok that starts playing. This is the “For You Page,” which plays tiktoks that TikTok’s algorithm recommends for you. To go to the next tiktok, you swipe up. To see the account that uploaded the current tiktok, swipe right. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Smart phone screen showing thumbnails of video clips" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354465/original/file-20200824-22-16tyze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comedian Sarah Cooper’s TikTok page shows thumbnails of her videos, or tiktoks, on the social media platform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-comedian-sarah-coopers-page-is-news-photo/1227952343?adppopup=true">Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How it compares</h2>
<p>Comparing TikTok with other digital media platforms shows what makes it unique. Like YouTube, TikTok consists entirely of videos. Like Facebook and Twitter the primary mode of consuming tiktoks is by navigating through a “feed” of short, digestible posts. </p>
<p>Like Netflix, the default mode of encountering content is through the recommendation algorithm, not through the construction of “friend” or “follower” networks. And like Snapchat and Instagram, TikTok can only be produced on mobile phones, favoring younger users who are more fluent with smartphones than computers.</p>
<p>TikTok is the first social media platform to combine these characteristics. The result is a unique way of conveying and consuming information. </p>
<h2>Information density</h2>
<p>The combination of video media and the “feed” makes TikTok especially information dense. There’s a lot going on with each tiktok, and there is a never-ending stream of tiktoks.</p>
<p>Unlike text, video media operates on two parallel pathways, conveying explicit information (the kind found in speech or writing) and implicit information (social cues like the TikToker’s clothes and hairstyle, or emotional affect from music) at the same time. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6864935703323675910?lang=en-US" style="border:0;width:100%;min-height:825px;" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The “feed” enables a social media consumer to scan through several pieces of bite-sized content per minute, extracting information in a much more efficient fashion than from a television broadcast. In combination, these trends make scrolling through the “For You Page” a whirlwind experience, a significant advance in information density. </p>
<p>If you spend a few hours on TikTok, you’ll see how this works. Other media begins to feel “slow,” even formerly compelling products like a YouTube video or Twitter feed. Younger people tend to love intensity – loud music, bright lights – and its no surprise they find TikTok compelling.</p>
<h2>Different costs and benefits</h2>
<p>TikTok also shifts the costs and benefits of posting. On the costs side, because TikTok is designed for smartphones it’s easier for some people to use, and harder for others. As a general rule, the more years of your life you spend using a technology – and the earlier in the life cycle those years are – the more skilled you become at using that technology. </p>
<p>TikTok also encourages videos filmed in the vertical orientation inherent to smartphones, so they can be created wherever the user goes, whenever they have a spare moment. </p>
<p>In terms of benefits, the importance of the recommendation algorithm over “friend” networks means that everyone is guaranteed to get at least a few views, even on their first tiktok. On Twitter, say, you might log on and tweet dozens of times before you get any “likes” due to the importance of “follower” networks in determining what people see. </p>
<p>TikTok’s “For You Page” varies between showing the user extremely popular tiktoks and tiktoks with only a handful of views, thus promoting greater equality than on traditional social networks. Overall, TikTok offers an online platform for young people that feels unusually disconnected from the adult world, one in which they are sure to get some amount of attention.</p>
<h2>Common sounds, unique moves</h2>
<p>Finally, the “sounds” that users combine with their personalized videos represent a novel way to categorize and navigate a social media platform, a feature unique to TikTok. If you click on the “sound” at the bottom of a tiktok, you can see all of the other tiktoks that use that sound file. </p>
<p>The most common example involves a specific dance routine paired with the accompanying “sound.” The audio is constant across this group of tiktoks, but each user provides a unique video of themselves performing the dance.</p>
<p>These dances are examples of TikTok memes. “Memes” on more text- or image-focused platforms involve some fixed “meme format” that is then remixed by users who edit the image or text to create a given “meme.” On TikTok, however, the raw material being remixed is the user’s body, as the user performs the behavior associated with the meme format, what I call “embodied memes.” </p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">Follow The Conversation U.S. on TikTok: @TheConversation</a>.</em> ]</p>
<p>This makes the body much more prominent on TikTok than other platforms. Whereas clever wordplay goes a long way on Twitter, TikTok rewards conventionally attractive or otherwise striking bodies to an even greater extent than Instagram. </p>
<p>This also means that the identity categories that are increasingly central to politics <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-filter-bubbles">play a major role on TikTok</a>. Embodied memes often play with the race, gender, appearance or physical location of the TikToker.</p>
<p>More conventional image memes can seem anonymous or disembodied as they are shared around the web. With TikTok, it’s impossible to separate the individual from the meme.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Munger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An app that young people use to share videos of themselves dancing might seem like a silly diversion, but it’s become a powerhouse social media platform.Kevin Munger, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1242282020-01-29T14:31:38Z2020-01-29T14:31:38ZRedesigning social media platforms to reduce ‘FoMO’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312253/original/file-20200128-81346-1fwo9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/people-watching-video-live-streamings-1338120284">Shutterstock/Rawpixel.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fear of missing out, or <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213000800">FoMO</a>, is commonly described as that anxious feeling you get when you think other people might be having a good time without you. Excessive FoMO is closely related to symptoms of <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/9/3528/htm?hc">behavioural addiction</a>. It often leads to undesirable behaviour such as the constant checking of social media, even in an inappropriate context, like while driving, and becoming overly preoccupied with reactions to online posts and messages. </p>
<p>Our new research has identified the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334428580_How_Can_Social_Networks_Design_Trigger_Fear_of_Missing_Out">main triggers</a> of this psychological phenomenon, the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335313009_Fear_of_Missing_Out_FoMO_as_Really_Lived_Five_Classifications_and_one_Ecology">contexts</a> in which it happens and the types of fears involved in it. We have also suggested <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326781720_Designing_Social_Networks_to_Combat_Fear_of_Missing_Out">new design features</a> which social media platforms could introduce to minimise this most modern form of social anxiety. </p>
<p>Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Our identity, beliefs and behaviours come from and are shaped by our interactions with others. From those we know well, to fleeting moments of eye contact with the strangers we walk past on the street. Previous generations may have had periods of respite from the social world. But the emergence of social media platforms and smartphones means access to social information and interaction, 24 hours a day, has never been easier. </p>
<p>This constant flow of interaction has an effect, and despite the adage that nothing on the internet ever goes away, social information can expire and become less meaningful after time. For example, ongoing group chats, live streaming and direct messages which expect an immediate answer. When people fail to keep up with all these battling messages and streams, FoMO rears its ugly head.</p>
<h2>FoMO sub-categories</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335313009_Fear_of_Missing_Out_FoMO_as_Really_Lived_Five_Classifications_and_one_Ecology">our research</a>, we looked at the situations and contexts in which FoMO may be triggered and what fears are encountered. </p>
<p>FoMO as a singular concept is an oversimplification. In contrast to the common idea of FoMO happening due to disconnection from the internet and social media (like losing signal or a dead battery), we found that it often happens when people are indeed connected. For example, when people have multiple devices and social media accounts and have little time or desire to check them all, they may fear missing important messages and events. </p>
<p>FoMO can also happen when people get frustrated by others not responding, despite receiving and reading messages. They may fear that they have missed out on previous interactions and missed out on the chance to show empathy. In addition to these, we discovered a number of sub-fears, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>fear of missing the opportunity to gain popularity. This happens if one is late in responding to others and in expressing empathy when needed</p></li>
<li><p>fear of missing valuable information</p></li>
<li><p>fear of being excluded from social groups due to lack of timely engagement</p></li>
<li><p>fear of inciting negative reactions</p></li>
</ul>
<p>FoMO has been associated with feelings of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216304198?via%3Dihub">stress and anxiety</a> and concerns around how we relate to each other online and what our expectations are. This is why social networks in their current designs are seen by many as antisocial tools, aiming mainly to attract people’s attention but focusing less on a healthy and humanised interaction.</p>
<p>FoMO also leads to questions about the role of technology in harming people’s wellbeing and the limited availability of tools and design features to help them regulate and shape their online social presence and identity. The <a href="https://wellbeing.google/">Google Digital Wellbeing</a> initiative is an example of efforts in that direction, with a focus on screen time awareness and management and novel ways for managing notifications and cool-off times.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334428580_How_Can_Social_Networks_Design_Trigger_Fear_of_Missing_Out">assessment of social media platforms</a> we noted how design features may trigger FoMO in users. For example, the basic feature of showing how many likes a post has received may create a fear that the user is missing out on indicators of social approval – something that has been demonstrated to be <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00292/full">linked to emotional wellbeing</a>. </p>
<p>Other features, such as the double tick delivery and notification feature in WhatsApp, may create a preoccupation with social relationships. So FoMO can be triggered when a user begins wondering why friends are not responding, despite reading the message. This can be a risk since, as demonstrated within <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/real-men-dont-write-blogs/201406/why-we-dont-give-each-other-break">social psychological research</a>, people often make mistakes in their explanation and interpretation of the behaviour of others. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-is-as-harmful-as-alcohol-and-drugs-for-millennials-78418">Social media is as harmful as alcohol and drugs for millennials</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A message left on “unread” or unanswered, for instance, may be interpreted by the sender as a snub, when in reality the recipient could have intended to do so but then lost their wifi connection or entered a meeting.</p>
<h2>Design solutions</h2>
<p>Technology can enhance existing problems, but it can also be used to bring about positive change. It can do so in an intelligent and interactive way. From the discussions we have had with people experiencing FoMO, we have identified a number of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326781720_Designing_Social_Networks_to_Combat_Fear_of_Missing_Out">possible designs</a> that could be implemented in a way that cross cut all their social media accounts, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Setting priority lists so that a person receives messages and notifications only for important events and topics and from selected sources, groups and contacts that they care about.</p></li>
<li><p>Allowing easy filtering, event recording and recapping so that a person can come back to social media in their own time without missing the temporarily available information and – at the same time – without being overwhelmed with pending notifications, content and interactions. </p></li>
<li><p>Enabling people to specify their social interaction protocol. For example, similar to setting privacy settings, users can specify that they do not always respond to comments and their presence online is sporadic so that others should not expect them to be fully engaged all the time. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Tech companies are conflicted between their goal of having as many users as possible on the one hand and their need to balance that with user wellbeing on the other. As an alternative, we propose a liberal and open model that allows applications and services – developed by third parties that are trusted and authorised by the user – to access their social media accounts and online usage data with the aim of helping them to regulate FoMO and the problematic attachment to digital media in general.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124228/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research has identified the main triggers of this psychological phenomenon, the contexts in which it happens and the types of fears involved in it.Raian Ali, Professor, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa UniversityJohn McAlaney, Associate Professor in Psychology, Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1125822019-03-29T11:27:09Z2019-03-29T11:27:09ZThe dying art of conversation – has technology killed our ability to talk face-to-face?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266167/original/file-20190327-139349-13qj93w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What with Facetime, <a href="https://theconversation.com/skype-hospital-appointments-are-coming-but-dont-hold-your-breath-109842">Skype</a>, Whatsapp and Snapchat, for many people, face-to-face conversation is used less and less often. </p>
<p>These apps allow us to converse with each other quickly and easily – overcoming distances, time zones and countries. We can even talk to virtual assistants such as Alexa, Cortana or Siri – commanding them to play our favourite songs, films, or tell us the weather forecast.</p>
<p>Often these ways of communicating reduce the need to speak to another human being. This has led to some of the conversational snippets of our daily lives now taking place mainly via <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-dont-want-ai-that-can-understand-us-wed-only-end-up-arguing-82338">technological devices</a>. So no longer do we need to talk with shop assistants, receptionists, bus drivers or even coworkers, we simply engage with a screen to communicate whatever it is we want to say.</p>
<p>In fact, in these scenarios, we tend to only speak to other people when the digital technology does not operate successfully. For instance, human contact occurs when we call for an assistant to help us when an item is not recognised at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-shoplifters-justify-theft-at-supermarket-self-service-checkouts-97029">self-service checkout</a>.</p>
<p>And when we have the ability to connect so quickly and easily with others using technological devices and software applications it is easy to start to overlook the value of face-to-face conversation. It seems easier to text someone rather than meet with them. </p>
<h2>Bodily cues</h2>
<p>My research into digital technologies indicates that phrases such as “word of mouth” or “keeping in touch” point to the <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3637992.html">importance of face-to-face conversation</a>. Indeed, face-to-face conversation can strengthen social ties: with our neighbours, friends, work colleagues and other people we encounter during our day.</p>
<p>It acknowledges their existence, their humanness, in ways that instant messaging and texting do not. Face-to-face conversation is a rich experience that involves drawing on memories, making connections, making mental images, associations and choosing a response. Face-to-face conversation is also multisensory: it’s not just about sending or receiving pre-programmed trinkets such as likes, cartoon love hearts and grinning yellow emojis. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266168/original/file-20190327-139374-fmlpic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quicker and easier, but are we losing the human touch?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When having a conversation using video you mainly see another person’s face only as a flat image on a screen. But when we have a face-to-face conversation in real life, we can look into someone’s eyes, reach out and touch them. We can also observe the other person’s body posture and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37688404_Hand_and_Mind_What_Gestures_Reveal_About_Thought">the gestures they use when speaking</a> – and interpret these accordingly. All these factors, contribute to the sensory intensity and depth of the face-to-face conversations we have in daily life.</p>
<h2>Speaking to machines</h2>
<p><a href="https://sherryturkle.com/">Sherry Turkle</a>, professor of social studies of science and technology, warns that when we first “speak through machines, [we] forget how essential face-to-face conversation is to our relationships, our creativity, and our capacity for empathy”. But then “we take a further step and speak not just through machines but to machines”. </p>
<p>In many ways, our everyday lives now involve a blend of face-to-face and technologically mediated forms of communication. But in my teaching and research I explain how digital forms of communication can supplement, rather than replace face-to-face conversation.</p>
<p>At the same time though, it is also important to acknowledge that some people value online communication because they can express themselves in ways they might find difficult through face-to-face conversation.</p>
<h2>Look up from your phone</h2>
<p><a href="http://garyturk.com/portfolio-item/lookup/">Gary Turk</a>, is a spoken word poet whose poem Look Up illustrates what is at stake by becoming entranced by technological ways of communicating at the expense of connecting with others face-to-face. </p>
<p>Turk’s poem draws attention to the rich, sensory aspects of face-to-face communication, valuing bodily presence in relation to friendship, companionship and intimacy. The central idea running through Turk’s evocative poem is that screen-based devices consume our attention while distancing us from the bodily sense of being with others. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z7dLU6fk9QY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately the sound, touch, smell and observation of bodily cues we experience when having a face-to-face conversation cannot be fully replaced by our technological devices. Communicating and connecting with others through face-to-face discussion is valuable because it is not something that can be edited, paused or replayed. </p>
<p>So next time you’re deciding between human or machine at the supermarket checkout or whether to get up from your desk and walk to another office to talk to a colleague – rather than sending them an email – it might be worth following Turk’s advice and engaging with the human rather than the screen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No longer do we need to talk with shop assistants, receptionists, bus drivers or even coworkers, we simply engage with a screen to communicate whatever it is we want to say.Melanie Chan, Senior Lecturer, Media, Communication and Culture, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1051462018-11-19T18:51:37Z2018-11-19T18:51:37ZHow to use Snapchat in the laboratory for better student engagement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246285/original/file-20181119-76140-1m3evlj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C29%2C1500%2C970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Snapchat has utility in laboratory settings.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Snapchat image and video instant messaging application has rocketed in popularity among teenagers. Since 2012, the number of active users climbed from 10 million to more than 100 million in early 2015. More than 400 million snaps were received by users daily in December. In contrast, it would take <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215301023">both Facebook and Instagram combined to achieve the equivalent numbers</a> in a single month.</p>
<p>Snapchat has been trialled in a <a href="https://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=2893353">few schools</a>. However, it has yet to be implemented on a larger scale in education, and even more specifically, no lecturer has integrated Snapchat into <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-innovative-videography-can-supercharge-education-97676">chemistry laboratory teaching</a>. Since most students are constantly using their mobile phones, we explored the <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/bk-2017-1270.ch003">use of Snapchat as an educational platform</a> to strengthen both the chemistry practical and theoretical concepts learned during the laboratory curriculum at any time. </p>
<p>This can be done when students access the app during and after the laboratory session or when they are using their phones on their way home. We specifically targeted the time outside of their chemistry lessons or when <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00915">chemistry concepts happen to not be on their minds</a>. The main challenge of implementing Snapchat as an auxiliary teaching tool arises from its unorthodox user interface and ever-changing functions. Despite these challenges, we applied Snapchat in our second-year practical class.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244934/original/file-20181111-116832-177856t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How to use Snapchat in laboratory education.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Snapchat’s approach</h2>
<p>In our pilot project, Snapchat assisted both teaching and learning by providing students with access to short videos uploaded by the lecturer in real-time, while incorporating the pedagogical concept of <a href="http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm">connectivism</a>. A possible content of these videos can be a demonstration of the correct execution of a certain procedural step that is usually done wrong by the previous batch of students. Besides, the lecturer can also instantly film a mistake that a student has committed without revealing the student’s identity. The lecturer can then illustrate to the whole class through the video so that other students can learn and not commit the same mistake. </p>
<p>This approach makes information dissemination much quicker, especially when the lecturer and teaching assistants (TA) are not able to attend to every single student at the same time. This quick feedback also appeals to the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4419605/">students’ need for instant gratification</a> – they learn something immediately after viewing the videos on the app. By making use of <a href="https://www.learntechlib.org/p/176179/">these networks</a>, students will be able to adopt the stance and different opinions of others. It is not possible to experience everything by oneself, so the student can learn from others via collaborative learning. Connectivism is now made possible with the advancement of technology that brings about social media apps like Facebook and Snapchat, to allow live sharing of content.</p>
<p>In this project’s context, even if students don’t make mistakes themselves, they can still learn from their peers’ examples through watching the snaps. These uploaded images and videos serve as pictorial examples for students to visualise, observe and learn from. We endeavoured to foster <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071005.2014.970798">heuristic learning</a> whereby students self-determine what they learn. With the heuristic approach in mind, the <a href="http://ascilite.org/conferences/dunedin2014/files/fullpapers/138-Narayan.pdf">instructor commences the learning process</a> by guiding students and supplying them with different resources. In the context of this project, many <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/smarter-living/snapchat-guide.html">snaps</a> are uploaded by the instructor onto Snapchat <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-snapchat-story-3486000">stories</a>. Students have the choice to decide if they want to access the app and watch all the stories uploaded before they expire in 24 hours.</p>
<h2>Methodology</h2>
<p>This project was carried out on a cohort of 104 chemistry undergraduates enrolled in a second year laboratory module at the <a href="http://nus.edu.sg/">National University of Singapore</a>. A preliminary survey indicated that 61 students were current or former Snapchat users. During laboratory sessions, the lecturer recorded snaps as he made his way around the lab to check on the students’ progress. On occasions when the lecturer demonstrated the use of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvuXnofHwJU&index=3&list=PLhGppvvkkaMQ3WIGSATQp4F81nJYA-Yip">lab instruments</a>, a TA recorded the snaps. A Snapchat public account was created for this to facilitate the sharing of the real-time contents with the students.</p>
<p>To upload content onto Snapchat story, the flowchart illustrated in Figure 1 can be followed. First, the instructor opens the app to capture an image or video. Once the content is captured, the instructor would add a caption to explain the main message in the snap or to pose a question for the students to think about. The screenshot shown in Step 2 will be observed at the bottom of the captured snap. If an image was captured, the user chooses how long the image will be shown to the viewers. For this project, the timer was always set at the maximum time limit of 10 seconds to allow sufficient time for the students to read the caption and look at the image clearly. Next, the instructor clicks on the blue “Send to” button followed by checking the “My story” option to publish the image or video onto Snapchat story. Alternatively, the “Story” icon shown in Step 2 can be directly selected as well. The final step shown in the flowchart shows the icon of the successfully uploaded story (Figure 1).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244933/original/file-20181111-37973-1j1j8fz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1. Flowchart of the steps taken to upload a Snapchat story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mobile phone usage is not prohibited in the laboratory due to consideration of possible emergency situations of family and friends that the students might need to attend to and photo-capturing of experimental observations for the students to compare and think of possible reasons for these experimental observations. Therefore, students could view the stories during the laboratory session, as well as after their sessions. Since viewers of the stories are not able to save the stories before they disappear and can no longer be viewed in 24 hours, students are motivated to view the stories before they leave. We believe that this 24-hour restriction encourage students to view the stories again right after each laboratory session, as a form of revision and reflection on the lab events.</p>
<p>During laboratory sessions, most of the snaps recorded students’ mistakes to encourage peer learning. For example, for 1H <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKt6bDw3od0">nuclear magnetic resonance</a> (NMR) analysis, several students used a spatula to transfer their solid sample from the centrifuge tube into the NMR tube. As the width of the spatula was wider than the aperture of the NMR tube, some spillage occurred (figure 2a). A correct demonstration of inverting the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sov0x9YdVfg">NMR tube</a> and then directly inserting it into the centrifuge tube to retrieve some product into the NMR tube was then recorded and uploaded (figure 2b).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244929/original/file-20181111-39548-1apbti4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2. (a) Uploaded snaps correct students mistakes. (b) Error made by a student.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other examples include correct demonstrations of laboratory techniques (figure 3a). In addition to learning from mistakes, students also made good improvisations to the experimental procedure, and these were recorded and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_XlKy97_Ow&index=38&t=0s&list=PLhGppvvkkaMQ3WIGSATQp4F81nJYA-Yip">uploaded onto Snapchat</a> as well. In addition, snaps with questions were uploaded to encourage the students to reflect on the procedure. (Figure 3b).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244931/original/file-20181111-39548-z4r5ge.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 3. Screenshots of uploaded snaps with captions for laboratory teaching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Different types of questions were also posted as <a href="https://youtu.be/jJ7nwZl6N9I">Snapchat stories</a>, possibly to aid students in the completion of their written reports (figure 4a). The answers to these questions raised in the snaps were revealed at the end of each week’s laboratory sessions to promote the good practice of empowering the students to think of responses before the solutions are revealed to them (figure 4b).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244930/original/file-20181111-116841-9c9jyi.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 4. (a) A question posed and uploaded as a Snapchat story. (b) The answer was revealed later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Results</h2>
<p>From the uploaded Snapchat stories data on viewership, it was found that more than 80% of the students watched the snaps. The highest record of viewership of a single video/image was 55 (figure 5). On average, stories garnered about 36 views among 61 users. The highest viewership recorded was 54 and the lowest, 25. The higher viewership was observed in later weeks, which suggests that more students found the snaps useful and checked their accounts more frequently to view uploaded content. Some students also took screenshots of the stories to save them in their phones. This was due to the ephemeral nature of snaps, since they would disappear after 24 hours.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244932/original/file-20181111-39548-zihd3h.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 5. Students viewership of uploaded Snapchat images and videos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the end of the Snapchat trial, a survey was given out to the cohort. 41 users’ responses were collected. In figure 6, the incorporation of Snapchat into the laboratory module was well-received by the students. 85% of the respondents agreed that the snaps uploaded aided in their revision, while 78% agreed that the application enabled them to learn better during the laboratory sessions. In addition, 83% were comfortable with using it for educational purposes. The last survey statement also garnered very positive response as 83% of the respondents hoped that such an app will be used for future lab teaching. The result implies that students indeed gained from the stories uploaded and would like this mobile app to be present again for their future learning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=215&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=215&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=270&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=270&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244927/original/file-20181111-116838-7908i0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=270&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 6. Survey Data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fun Man FUNG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Feedback was also garnered from the students, to find out how they felt about the content uploaded onto Snapchat story. In the feedback gathered, there were many positive comments on the videos and images uploaded on Snapchat. For example: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Snapchat videos were informative. They were clear and highly accessible and the videos also show us the mistakes made by our peers, enabling us to learn from them. Furthermore, it also shows the good things that our peers have done, enabling us to learn good lab techniques.”</p>
<p>“The videos/images uploaded allowed me to do a review about that particular experiment, as well as enabling me to do a self-reflection and provided us with questions/delve deeper into things which we would not have thought about.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Considerations about the app</h2>
<p>Snapchat allows users to snap photos and videos of up to 10 seconds. At first, this 10-second duration may seem too short to fully deliver content across the screen. However, it could be a way of dealing with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/mar/11/technology-Internet-pupil-attention-teaching">shorter attention spans</a> that many youth possess. Moreover, these short videos compress large chunks of information into granular level for more focused learning.</p>
<p>Overall, the use of Snapchat as an instant video-sharing platform proved to be a useful pedagogical tool. The application can enhance the student learning experience by allowing the viewing of real-time images and videos uploaded by the instructors. This method overcomes the challenge of <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00457">higher student-to-teacher ratios</a>, promotes active learning and makes the educational process more enjoyable and engaging. Moreover, students are engaged in learning even after school hours as they can watch the snaps on the go.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was written based on the author’s work with Alina Ang Sihui in her Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme in Science (UROPS) project at the Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fun Man FUNG receives funding from National University of Singapore Faculty of Science and Department of Chemistry to perform this pedagogy project. </span></em></p>The use of the popular mobile application for multimedia sharing in a large laboratory class was shown to enhance the students’ learning experiences.Fun Man Fung, Assistant Director (Education) at the Institute for Application of Learning Science and Educational Technology, National University of SingaporeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/993622018-10-10T23:03:26Z2018-10-10T23:03:26ZThe social implications of teens leaving Facebook<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239993/original/file-20181010-72103-1k4vqy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many teenagers have stopped using Facebook and have gravitated instead to image-sharing platforms like Instagram.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Alex Iby/Unsplash)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For years, Facebook grew in size and influence at a staggering rate. But <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/">recent reports</a> suggest its hold on users — particularly in the developed world — may be weakening. </p>
<p>Globally, Facebook’s user numbers continue to rise steadily as more people in the developing world connect. In the United States, two in three adults use Facebook but that number has <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/">not changed for the past two years</a>. In particular, the number of U.S. teens using Facebook is in decline. </p>
<p>According to the non-partisan Pew Research Center, <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/">71 per cent of U.S. teens who are online used Facebook</a> in 2015. Now, <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/">barely half say they do</a>. Among those who remain, an increasing proportion seem to be trying to <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/">minimize their Facebook use</a>, even as their use of other social media platforms such as Instagram appears to be on the rise. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239947/original/file-20181009-72106-4agcye.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Snapchat and Instagram use grows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pew Research Center)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a researcher who studies the “digital divide,” I am concerned about how internet use varies from group to group and whether these differences have important consequences for society.</p>
<h2>Why does this shift matter?</h2>
<p>Many concerns have been raised about Facebook: it’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-we-should-all-cut-the-facebook-cord-or-should-we-93929">addictive, it collects (and distributes) too much personal data</a> and it breeds <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-too-much-facebook-can-leave-you-feeling-down-40023">jealousy and depression</a>. It’s understandable that Facebook’s comeuppance is a cheery prospect to some. But as with any shift in behaviour, there will be winners and losers — and some surprises.</p>
<p>The shift away from Facebook to other social media is important because each service allows or encourages its users to do different things. </p>
<p>Facebook offers a very broad range of types of data that can be shared — links, text, photos, videos and more. It serves a very wide range of functions. It is often used for simple interpersonal communication, but is also useful for forming discussion groups, sharing news and organizing events.</p>
<p>Despite the controversy over Facebook’s role in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-facebook-is-the-reason-fake-news-is-here-to-stay-94308">spread of “fake news”</a> the platform plays an important role in exposing young people to the news. There is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x">evidence to suggest</a> that those who use social media to get their news are more likely to become politically active. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236729/original/file-20180917-158246-o2ywvu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Where Canadians expect to hear breaking news.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abacus Data</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instagram and Snapchat, by contrast, are strongly focused on image sharing. Sharing text or links or facilitating discussion are not easy to do on those platforms. While news and current events are featured on their services, they do not have a central role.</p>
<h2>The wealthy leave Facebook</h2>
<p>Teen use of Facebook appears to be <a href="https://qz.com/1355827/do-teens-use-facebook-it-depends-on-their-familys-income/">declining most sharply among wealthy teens</a> in the U.S., and is being replaced by other social media services like Snapchat and Instagram. Although we do not really know much about why, the class-based change in communication patterns raises questions about their broader social consequences. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239992/original/file-20181010-72127-14v68pj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=701&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pew Research Center)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Take into consideration all of the potential positives of Facebook use as compared to other social media tools. It has a broader range of expressive tools and functions. </p>
<p>It <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x">keeps acquaintances in touch with one another, aids informal networking and enables organization of political and social groups</a>. As well-to-do teens leave Facebook, they will no longer benefit from those tools.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if future power and influence rests with those wealthy teens, and they withdraw from Facebook, it may be one more way society is fragmenting, with the better-off seeking more exclusive ways to network. </p>
<p>Facebook’s algorithms do tend to expose users primarily to the lives and interests of those they are closest to, but nonetheless offers a window from time to time into the lives of other friends who are more distant. By leaving the network, the wealthy may lose a means of learning about the lives of those less fortunate. </p>
<h2>Video is the new text</h2>
<p>It is also worth looking at the broader social and educational impacts of the shift away from sharing text towards sharing images and videos. </p>
<p>When the internet was first widely adopted, email and online discussion forums were largely text-based, boosting everyday literacy. Gradually, however, the amount of text used in online communication has dropped. </p>
<p>The average tweet, for example, is around <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16990308/twitter-280-character-tweet-length">50 characters long</a>, and even though Facebook offers a wide choice of ways to interact, <a href="https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/">posting a video improves the likelihood that others will see it</a>, which encourages a shift away from text there. With the exception of optional hashtags, images posted to Instagram and Snapchat may have no accompanying text at all.</p>
<p>Of course, image and video production have their own “literacies,” and video can be an effective form of communication for political and social change. However, it is possible that this shift away from text will have the unanticipated side effect of dis-empowering poor social media users. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239995/original/file-20181010-72113-1xbv3bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A social media environment focused on video, may become filled with easy, unpolished interpersonal chatter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kym Ellis/Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early researchers thought text-based communication via the internet would let those with lower social status participate in discussion and debate on a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2631506">more equal basis</a>, because readers could not judge posters by their gender, race or social class. Now, of course, social media profiles usually provide readers with indications of race and gender and other social cues, weakening this effect, but text-based messages may still reach across class barriers more effectively than video.</p>
<p>It’s also important to consider how easy it is to craft messages designed to have social impact using different media. It is easy to create a basic video message with a smartphone, but it can have a steeper learning curve (and equipment cost) if you want to employ editing, lighting, sound design and other persuasive techniques. It much harder to conceal status indicators like gender, race and class on video than it is in text, making it easier for those who discriminate (whether consciously or unconsciously) to ignore or downplay video messages. </p>
<h2>The future</h2>
<p>Video tools and techniques may become accessible to all. With that comes the risk that a video-centric social media environment will consist mostly of people sharing videos and photos for easy, unpolished interpersonal chatter. This may leave commercial forces and the better off to dominate the online public sphere of video. Educators can help young people understand social media and learn how to use it more effectively (and safely).</p>
<p>Scholars, educators and policy makers struggle to keep up with the speed at which people’s online behaviour is changing. As social media has emerged as one of the most important ways people communicate with one another and with the world, we must have more nuanced conversations about possible changes in the way we understand one another and the balance of power between social groups.</p>
<p>Rather than debating whether social media (or social media companies) are good or bad, a key question we should be asking is: how do different groups use social media differently and how are those differences affecting society? There is much we need to learn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99362/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David R Brake does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Teens – especially wealthier ones – are walking away from Facebook, towards picture-centric social media.David R Brake, Researcher and Educator, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/993282018-07-17T13:31:55Z2018-07-17T13:31:55ZFrom Love Island to HD brows, what you need to know about narcissism<p>The TV show of the summer, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-love-island-is-the-best-kept-guilty-secret-on-british-television-97409">Love Island</a>, is fascinating for many viewers – but especially so for personality psychologists. Mainly because the programme is a parade of rampant narcissism. Even if you can’t quite define it, you can sense it in several contestants’ preened, “perfected” and often utterly artificial appearances (think Megan) and their roaming, self-interested, and “gaslighting” <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-adam-shows-teenagers-how-not-to-treat-romantic-partners-98801">romantic behaviours</a> (think Adam).</p>
<p>In contemporary society, narcissism is all around us. The rise of “celebrity” culture, selfies, Instagram and Snapchat, all help to fuel an obsession with and celebration of self-promoting “icons” – like <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-the-kardashian-jenner-family-become-so-successful-a-psychologist-explains-92377">the Kardashians</a>.</p>
<p>Psychologists have studied narcissism since the turn of the 20th-century – and it’s a word many people are familiar with. It’s a personality trait <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868316685018">defined by</a> entitlement and a belief that you are “special”. It also involves self-centredness, a need for admiration and recognition, and a casual, exploitative attitude towards friends and partners.</p>
<p>Narcissism exists on a spectrum, from low – which most people are – to very high, which makes up only a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3819488/Being-narcissist-wins-friends-not-long-Popularity-people-personality-trait-temporary.html">very small percentage of the population</a>. Like other personality traits, narcissism exists to a greater or lesser extent in all of us. And it’s found across <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656603000266">all ethnicities, cultures, and ages</a> – though it is typically seen at <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0038231">higher levels in men than women</a>.</p>
<h2>Narcissistic traits</h2>
<p>Contrary to what you might expect, <a href="https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84939566711&origin=resultslist&sort=plf-f&src=s&sid=0ad1bd2e1157b916ae4e6f71c832ad20&sot=autdocs&sdt=autdocs&sl=18&s=AU-ID%2835174438300%29&relpos=6&citeCnt=21&searchTerm=">there’s no link</a> between narcissism and talking about “me, me, me”. In fact, narcissism is more related to talking about friends – to suggest popularity. </p>
<p>Other hallmarks of narcissistic speech include the use of more <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661000084X">swear words and sexual language</a> – being unconventional and titillating. Narcissistic people may also be quite funny, as they use non-hostile, witty, cheery and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910000358#!">self-enhancing humour to build relationships</a>. In short, they charm and disarm. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen me.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most people might expect narcissism to be related to “peacocking” – wearing flashy or designer clothing and accessories, to catch the eye, impress others, and advertise wealth – <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550612461284">and indeed it is</a>. Research shows that both sexes high in the trait dress smartly, and are well-groomed. The end result is that we can often tell if someone is narcissistic <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656608000901">just by looking at them</a>.</p>
<h2>How to spot it</h2>
<p>What might be less well known is that natural, physical manifestations of narcissism can also be spotted in our faces, according to some studies. It has even been suggested that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661100136X">women high in the trait tend to have sharper features</a>. And one recent study claimed that highly narcissistic people have <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12396">thicker, denser eyebrows</a>. </p>
<p>Narcissistic traits, we are told, are also frequently seen more in people whose <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656611001127">faces have greater symmetry</a>, – which are typically more appealing. In this way then, it turns out that people often <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656609002177">find narcissism quite attractive</a>. </p>
<p>Research has also found that narcissistic people seem to be charming and popular in the first instance and to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40869027_Why_Are_Narcissists_so_Charming_at_First_Sight_Decoding_the_Narcissism-Popularity_Link_at_Zero_Acquaintance">move in a self-assured manner</a>.</p>
<h2>The problem</h2>
<p>But a narcissistic person’s appealing veneer belies what goes on beneath. They are extroverted and open minded, yes, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691616666070">but disagreeable and low in honesty and humility</a>. They may be sociable, but they’re dominant – which has traditionally been considered a sexy but dangerous combination – <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1995-24993-001">at least in men</a>. </p>
<p>Highly narcissistic people exhibit a lot of negative behaviours, from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661000084X">skipping class more often</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910005015">cheating in tests</a> and forming friendships based on <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147470491201000303">what people have to offer and how attractive they are</a>. It’s a short-term approach to life, and love, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407506064204">focused on self-satisfaction</a>. The bottom line is that narcissistic people don’t make for great long-term romantic partners – and though there’s some evidence <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167209340904">change is possible</a>, it isn’t very likely.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Look how great we are’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The evidence is a little mixed, but narcissistic <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407506064204">men</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915002524">women</a> may be <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167202287006">more likely to stray</a>, swap partners, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909004619">or even steal someone’s else’s partner</a>, than work on an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909004619">existing relationship</a>. </p>
<p>Narcissistic men and women alike have a <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2002-17391-007">game playing romantic style</a>. But research has shown that in heterosexual marriages, it’s the wife’s levels of narcissism – more so than the husband’s – that can have a substantial, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2015-27303-001">negative effect on marital satisfaction</a>.</p>
<p>The ease with which narcissistic people can form new relationships – using their first impression charm – and the novelty of another “conquest” holds considerable sway. This is especially true for narcissistic men, who <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911003011#b0125">aren’t even all that picky</a>.</p>
<p>But other than taking one more look at your potential Tinder date’s eyebrows before you swipe right, the reality is, you may find narcissistic people hard to avoid. These types of people are likely to “want” something from you – consider what that is. And if you have found yourself in a relationship or friendship with someone who’s narcissistic, try and set clear boundaries and be aware of the potential consequences.</p>
<p>And if you’re wondering where you sit on the scale, one of the tools psychologists use to measure narcissism is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory – you can see how you fare on it, and compare your score with others <a href="https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/">here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A recent study found that highly narcissistic people have thicker, denser eyebrows.Gregory Carter, Lecturer in the School of Psychological and Social Sciences, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/999062018-07-16T10:39:53Z2018-07-16T10:39:53ZTrade war could chill China’s growing investment in US economy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227706/original/file-20180715-27042-fhkag9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. is the biggest destination for Chinese foreign investment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. and China are currently engaged in an <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/unpacked/2018/07/12/unpacked-the-us-china-trade-war/">ever-escalating trade war</a> with no end in sight. While the focus of the dispute has centered on tariffs, the consequences <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/trade-war-explained-tariffs-donald-trump-us-china-imports-exports-a8434626.html">are expected to spill</a> well beyond imports and exports to other aspects of the countries’ complex relationship. </p>
<p>One such area is what economists call foreign direct investment, in which companies invest in businesses in another country. The United States’ ability to draw investments from around the world has been a <a href="http://www.areadevelopment.com/LocationUSA/2017-US-inward-investment-guide/importance-of-FDI-to-US-economy.shtml">significant driver</a> of its economic growth. Indeed, the U.S. was the <a href="https://ofii.org/sites/default/files/FDIUS%202017.pdf">top destination</a> for foreign investment in 2016, as it usually is. </p>
<p>China’s investments in the U.S., however, remain relatively paltry, despite the country’s growing clout on the world stage. And while most have been small and low-profile, a few bigger deals have made headlines and even been blocked over “national security” concerns. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eubX-aYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I research</a> the international political economy of China’s rise. Even though most Chinese investment in the U.S. has little to do with national security, I believe the current tense environment will put a chill on Chinese-American deals – with severe long-term consequences. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227686/original/file-20180715-27027-7xzovp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tesla CEO Elon Musk greets new owners of his company’s Model S sedans in Beijing in 2014. China’s Tencent took a 5 percent stake in Tesla in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ng Han Guan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A snapshot of China FDI in the US</h2>
<p>The reality is that the vast majority of the <a href="https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Chinese-Investment-Jan-2018.pdf">232 investments</a> made by Chinese companies in the United States since 2005 have little to do with national security. </p>
<p>A typical example is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/dec/08/business.china">Beijing-based Lenovo’s acquisition</a> of IBM’s personal computer business in 2004 for US$1.75 billion, which raised little fanfare or objection. Or consumer electronics company <a href="https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2116486/chinas-haier-has-plan-help-continue-turnaround-ge-appliances">Haier’s purchase</a> of General Electric’s home appliance unit in 2016 for $5.6 billion, again without a fuss. </p>
<p>In more recent years, Chinese companies have taken stakes in some well-known Silicon Valley companies. For example, last year, Chinese tech and media investment firm Tencent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-snap-tencent-stake/chinas-tencent-takes-12-percent-stake-in-snap-as-shares-plunge-idUSKBN1D81G3">acquired</a> a 12 percent stake in the owner of the messaging app Snapchat and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-28/tencent-buys-1-8-billion-tesla-stake-ahead-of-musk-s-model-3">5 percent</a> of Elon Musk’s Tesla. Also in 2017, China’s sovereign wealth fund invested $100 million in room-sharing service Airbnb. </p>
<p>Overall, China remains a minor U.S. investor – and the data suggest the president’s <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/10-times-trump-attacked-china-trade-relations-us/story?id=46572567">rhetoric on the campaign trail</a> may have already had a disruptive impact. Last year, China <a href="https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Chinese-Investment-Jan-2018.pdf">invested</a> $24 billion in the U.S., down from $54 billion in 2016, excluding deals under $100 million in size. </p>
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<p>While that’s a sharp rise from just $5 billion a decade ago, it’s barely a drop in the bucket for the U.S. economy. <a href="https://ofii.org/sites/default/files/FDIUS%202017.pdf">China’s cumulative investments</a> in 2016 made up less than 2 percent of all $3.7 trillion invested in the U.S., ranking it 11th, a fraction of the U.K.’s $598 billion and Canada’s $454 billion, the top sources of funding.</p>
<p>California and New York alone <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-25/chinese-investment-creates-and-protects-u-s-jobs-rhodium-says">received</a> the lion’s share of China’s $171 billion in investments from 2005 to 2017, or 51 percent. All but 14 states have received at least one investment in the period. </p>
<p><iframe id="OSbMV" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/OSbMV/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>By sector, the biggest chunk has gone into property investments – such as prime real estate in New York along Park Avenue – which tallied $26 billion, or 15 percent, in the period. Financial firms such as BlackRock took in the next largest share of 14 percent, while 13 percent went to technology businesses like IBM and Motorola. </p>
<h2>National security and politics</h2>
<p>Two of the reasons Chinese investment in the U.S. isn’t higher are national security and politics. A number of high-profile deals have rung alarm bells among U.S. officials and politicians and ended up getting killed as a result. </p>
<p>For example, in 2003, Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB105168669140493600">withdrew</a> from a joint bid for fiber-optic carrier Global Crossing after the <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33388.pdf">Committee on Foreign Investment</a> opened an investigation of the deal as some defense officials grew concerned the company’s chairman was too close to Chinese government officials. </p>
<p>Two years later, China oil producer CNOOC <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112295744495102393">dropped its effort</a> to buy U.S. rival Unocal for $18.5 billion. In this case, it was lawmakers in Congress who managed to scuttle the deal. CNOOC <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112298888643902543">blamed</a> a “political environment.”</p>
<p>The Committee on Foreign Investment, <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33388.pdf">established</a> by President Gerald Ford in 1975, has the power to veto investments if they might damage U.S. national security. Proposed Chinese investments get reviewed more often than those from any other country. Though the launch of an investigation is often enough to stop a deal – as was the case with Hutchison – the committee has only vetoed five deals, four of which involved China. </p>
<p>One came in 2012, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/us/politics/chinese-company-ordered-to-give-up-stake-in-wind-farms-near-navy-base.html">President Barack Obama cited the committee’s recommendation</a> as he ordered Ralls Corp., a U.S. company owned by Chinese nationals, to divest its interests in wind turbines being built close to a Navy military site in Oregon. It was the first time the power was used since 1990, when President George Bush blocked the sale of an American aircraft manufacturing company to a Chinese agency. </p>
<p>And last year, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lattice-m-a-canyonbridge-trump/trump-bars-chinese-backed-firm-from-buying-u-s-chipmaker-lattice-idUSKCN1BO2ME">prevented</a> Chinese investment firm Canyon Bridge Capital Partners from acquiring U.S. chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor. </p>
<p>And the president <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/cfius-expansion-trump.html">supports a bipartisan bill</a> in Congress that would grant the Committee on Foreign Investments even more power. </p>
<h2>FDI as foreign policy</h2>
<p>While China may not make up a significant portion of the U.S. total, its spending there makes up the <a href="https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/China-Tracker-Jan2018.pdf">largest share</a> of Chinese outbound FDI by country. </p>
<p>From 2005 to these days, China invested $171 billion of its $1.87 trillion in total foreign investment in the U.S. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politics/article/dissuasive-effect-of-us-political-influence-on-chinese-fdi-during-the-going-global-policy-era/34345FFDB008BD612F7469857CBCA10C">My own research</a> into China’s investments shows that state-owned companies are very sensitive to the government’s foreign policy goals. An agency known as the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-04-12/sasac-s-xiao-on-soe-reform-china-soe-investment-in-u-s-video">State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission</a> of the State Council coordinates all foreign investments by major Chinese businesses. </p>
<p>Any drop in investments to the U.S. will probably be compensated by more spending in other destinations, especially those countries that are part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/one-belt-one-road-33049">One Belt, One Road</a> initiative such as Australia, Singapore and Vietnam. </p>
<h2>Going forward</h2>
<p>And in fact, the current trade dispute between the U.S. and China will most likely lead to less Chinese investment as deals will encounter increased scrutiny and resistance. </p>
<p>The president has said he <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/986966/trump-news-trade-war-us-china-tariffs">launched</a> the trade war because Chinese companies <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-started-the-trade-war-not-trump-1521797401">have a track record</a> of “stealing” Western technology and not respecting intellectual property. Hence, the administration will likely block investments that look along these lines or threaten national security.</p>
<p>But politics will also play a role as members of Congress and others <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42405458/trump-china-and-russia-rivals-in-new-era-of-competition">regard China</a> warily as a growing rival that must be confronted. One risk is that <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/07/18/chapter-3-attitudes-toward-china/">anti-China sentiment</a> in the U.S. increases and makes it harder for the country to use “soft power” via cultural and economic means to achieve its ends – which is preferable to hard power at the end of a bayonet. </p>
<p>It’s unfortunate because <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3450062/helpman_tradewars.pdf?sequence=4">years on international political economy research</a> suggest trade wars and discouraging investment <a href="http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/%7Elorenzo/Ikenberry%20Rise%20of%20China.pdf">are exactly the wrong ways</a> for the U.S. to deal with China’s rise. The U.S. can find other strategies to challenge any unfair trading or business practices without jeopardizing good economic relations, which <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/renegotiating-the-world-order/B0878F74F44B1F08F3C7535019FBAEE3">have always been</a> the best way to prevent clashes and even war among great powers. </p>
<p>Beyond that, deeper business ties lead to better relations and stronger economies. Economic interdependence raises the costs of direct confrontation, leading to a more peaceful international system.</p>
<p>What concerns me from the current trade war is that it could make geopolitical clashes between China and U.S. stronger and more frequent in the long run.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francisco Urdinez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Chinese investment in the US has never been high, but the ongoing trade war could dampen it further, with significant long-term repercussions.Francisco Urdinez, Professor of International Political Economy, Universidad Católica de ChileLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/934062018-03-20T06:13:00Z2018-03-20T06:13:00ZMental health risks to girls who spend more than an hour a day on social media – new study<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210599/original/file-20180315-104699-ua63rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/home">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For tweens and early teens, the rise in time spent on Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram and other social media is <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf">really quite dramatic</a>. Culture minister Matt Hancock recently <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/children-social-media-online-screen-time-time-limits-matt-hancock-a8249391.html">suggested</a> the government could impose limits on the amount of time children spend on social media. In February, the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee launched a new <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/news-parliament-2017/social-media--young-peoples-health-inquiry-launch-17-19/">inquiry</a> to examine the health risks to children and young teens of increasing amounts of time on social media. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-018-5220-4">new study</a> set out to look at patterns of behaviour among ten to 15 year olds in the UK, and their levels of well-being, to see if all this time spent online was having a detrimental impact on their mental health. We found that teenage girls are by far the highest users of social media, and those who are using it for more than an hour a day are also at the highest risk of developing well-being problems in later teen years.</p>
<p>We used the youth participants’ data from the UK household longitudinal study, <a href="https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/">Understanding Society</a>, following almost 10,000 young people from diverse backgrounds across the whole country between 2009 and 2015.</p>
<p>We asked the young people to report on how much time they spent on social media on a “normal school day”. A few reported no internet access or no time spent at all, but some were on it for four hours or more. We found that 10% of ten-year-old girls reported spending one to three hours a day (compared with 7% of boys) and this increased to 43% of girls at age 15 (and 31% of boys).</p>
<p>We assessed two measures of well-being for these young people. The first was a combined score of their answers to questions about satisfaction with schoolwork, friends, family, appearance, school and life as a whole. The second measure was a <a href="http://www.sdqinfo.com/">well-established questionnaire</a> which asked the young people about their social and emotional difficulties.</p>
<p>At age ten, girls who interacted on social media for an hour or more on a school day had worse levels of well-being compared to girls who had lower levels of social media interaction. Additionally, these girls with higher social media interaction at aged ten were more likely to experience more social and emotional difficulties as they got older. While our study was unable to say that the higher level of social media use among young girls directly caused the mental health issues, there was a strong association. </p>
<p>For both boys and girls, levels of happiness decreased between the ages of ten and 15, however the decrease among girls was greater than that of boys. </p>
<p><iframe id="MadqI" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/MadqI/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>What makes girls different?</h2>
<p>There are number of <a href="https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Childrens-Commissioner-for-England-Life-in-Likes.pdf">possible reasons</a> why girls are more affected by social media use than boys. Girls participate in more comparisons of their own lives with those of the people they are friends with or follow. Viewing filtered or photoshopped images and mostly positive posts may lead to feelings of inadequacy and poorer well-being. Girls also feel more pressure to develop and maintain a social media presence than boys. Social media presence requires constant updating and having friends share or like their content. If their perceived popularity decreases over time, there may also be an increase in social and emotional difficulties.</p>
<p>Boys, on the other hand, are <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-parents-nov-15">much more likely</a> to participate in gaming online and via consoles than they are social media, and that wasn’t covered by our study. Boys’ levels of well-being may be more related to gaming. </p>
<p>So what can be done to help protect young people from the potential damage to their mental health? Social media interaction does not appear to be a short-lived phenomenon. A recent report by the Children’s Commissioner for England, <a href="https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/publication/life-in-likes/">Life in Likes</a>, suggested imploring social media platforms to check underage use and preparing children better for life in a digital age. The recommendations did not discuss potential gender differences; but the findings from our study suggest that boys and girls can have varying responses to high levels of social media interaction.</p>
<p>There have also been <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/31/facebook-urged-tell-children-spend-long-online/">calls</a> for the technology industry to look at in-built time limits. Our study really backs this up – the amount of increasing time online is strongly associated with a decline in well-being among the young, especially for girls. Of course, young people need access to the internet for homework, for watching TV and to keep in touch with their mates. But they probably don’t need to spend two, three or four hours chatting, sharing and comparing on social media every school day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93406/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cara Booker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Teenage girls using social media for more than an hour a day face risks to their well-being as they grow up.Cara Booker, Research Fellow and Deputy Director of Graduate Studies, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/915532018-03-02T11:43:43Z2018-03-02T11:43:43ZShould you send a text or email? Here’s some advice from Aristotle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208329/original/file-20180228-36706-1yckfd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How should you communicate?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sintex/300497233/in/photolist-sy8mM-C17WxS-bFiepD-553iLt-KytvvQ-ca1mj-rmNEoE-6AgqWW-ohaoWW-4DyzYM-peBLUq-pxkVyU-vcMf8T-PFCer-nK1Yqw-8KjVXB-s5snJA-zrT9hQ-4VK1qy-KctgSv-zYxBx2-8YEyyn-4224nP-BHGoa5-S9zs5A-NmtHn2-mMnJYC-yiioaz-WK6AGA-xiVTnE-f6hjXr-q8ffws-aDQPz8-C24FK2-KfBRZM-TrEDNr-pEWyyT-roLS89-dfm8GA-cDNqkE-eWKEim-6J71xK-86YW5H-eAyu8T-dQCUqR-ecLpCP-qVTxsT-dL5iGs-bAXZm1-rFTY6g">Garrett</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Suppose you want to get in touch with a friend. Once, your options for doing so might have been sparse: pick up the phone or write a letter. But these days, you have to decide: Should you call or text, use Snapchat, or reach out on Twitter, Messenger or Skype?</p>
<p>Other considerations, whether it’s an old friend or new acquaintance, or whether you’re asking a favor or checking in, as well as your own conversational tendencies and preferences, could also factor in.</p>
<p>As an <a href="http://www.alexiselder.net">ethicist specializing in social technologies</a>, such questions interest me. These choices play a significant role in our lives. As anthropologist <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/centre-for-digital-anthropology/people/#5">Stefana Broadbent</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FVcDAAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT106&dq=stefana+broadbent&ots=9px00gkk1G&sig=tfyTxgPJFDS6lJrIorNY1ho9VsA#v=onepage&q&f=false">observes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“… an individual is now held morally responsible for which particular channel he or she employs. … People may be as incensed by the selection of an inappropriate medium for dumping a boyfriend or girlfriend as the fact that they have been dumped.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This fact was reflected in popular media (as when <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/21/chris-rock-curses-out-a-w_n_772107.html">Chris Rock cursed out a woman’s ex for breaking up via Facebook</a>), but it’s also a feature of our daily lives. </p>
<p>From asking a partner to pick up dinner on the way home to checking in on a neighbor with health problems, many of us frequently face the question: How should I communicate? </p>
<h2>Here’s how to think about the question</h2>
<p>I use a theoretical framework known as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/">virtue ethics</a> to tackle such issues. Thinking about how communication channels both affect and express our character can help us make appropriate decisions in each circumstance.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208330/original/file-20180228-36686-1b04bxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aristotle. Line engraving by P. Fidanza after Raphael Sanzio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAristotle._Line_engraving_by_P._Fidanza_after_Raphael_Sanzio_Wellcome_V0000205.jpg">]Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The core idea behind virtue ethics is that most of us want to cultivate traits (or virtues) that will help us live well. These virtues can be cultivated through repeated practice, but they can also be destroyed in the same way. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-eth/">Aristotelian virtue ethics</a> emphasize that people should try to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/27743819">aim at the right amount of a trait</a>: Too much fear can make it hard to function, but too little will get them injured. What counts as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jDl1u-RXoKgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">right amount</a> can vary based on context - warfare and child care may call for very different sorts of reactions. Nevertheless, some general guidelines can help us think about what kind of people we want to be, and how to get there.</p>
<p>We want to be generous, not selfish or servile. We want to be brave, not cowardly or rash. We want to be thoughtful, neither too impulsive nor overanalytical. We want to be empathetic, not callous, but not self-sacrificing. We want to be engaged rather than disengaged, but also not enmeshed with our loved ones. In each case, we aim for the virtuous middle by practicing to develop traits we want for ourselves.</p>
<h2>Reflect on the message and messenger</h2>
<p>Different communication channels can nudge us toward or away from different extremes. Communication channels like Snapchat and phone calls encourage spontaneity because, once delivered, the message disappears. Forms of communication that leave permanent records, like email <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-008-9160-z">encourage deliberateness and thoughtfulness</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208331/original/file-20180228-36696-kqsbtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A phone call could encourage spontaneity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/uncoolbob/14131910518/in/photolist-nwMJDC-UVof5Q-EP2jxS-Zdcfpm-7UxDEE-bnqxhq-7hY5TA-8wEJ4i-gtxdc-ii5Bgk-6H8CEY-nz3nx-8sa7qd-Kf9ed-azeJAP-7jK8gt-8TZg4D-nSgEhz-4c4tjp-2486soT-JA5do-e1m8Ku-G7t57-4S5XQG-nodtX2-87uLL3-cpJmZb-dr8LMJ-Sd2WMp-bk7FuR-8dgS9U-21VfRhY-azMs2n-Dp7QEd-5Nd2oA-3HDYJE-RWQnHn-dfJJ4-o4NKAt-8vQZBZ-qTHvvw-7LKHEM-7kGGu9-4SxNUq-YgHWBA-ekV3AJ-5qyMnn-WH9gFs-2AU932-356dHB">uncoolbob</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In general, public channels like Facebook posts tend to invite others to share the news and pay attention to us, while private messages can foster more individualized empathetic responses. Some formats, like email, allow one to compose a message at leisure, to revise and polish, encouraging many of us to slow down and reflect. Others, like phone and video chat that require real-time response, could help us be more spontaneous. </p>
<p>Use of images like memes, selfies and emojis can help us convey and engage emotionally, while textual communication can help emotions. Researcher <a href="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esturkle/">Sherry Turkle</a> <a href="http://www.reclaimingconversationbook.com/">interviewed a family</a> who argued via text message to help keep emotions from overwhelming their ability to give others a fair hearing, and express themselves clearly.</p>
<p>Several ethicists have raised concerns that <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-014-0156-9">technology, by making things easier, can lead to de-skilling</a>. We could <a href="http://www.reclaimingconversationbook.com/">lose certain skills by failing to exercise them</a>. For example, I might lose the ability to listen patiently and empathetically if I always communicate by text, drifting in and out of the conversation as it interests or suits me. But I could also use communication technologies like training wheels: to practice the skills I want to exemplify in my life and repeatedly exercising them until they become second nature and are thus integrated into my character. </p>
<h2>What helps us be better people</h2>
<p>So, our choice of communication channel, then, should be guided by thinking about how it can help bring together our aspirations about the person we want to be, keeping in mind our character as it currently is.</p>
<p>If I know I tend to lose my temper in emotional conversations, arguing via text or email may help me slow down, reflect and reconsider what the other person is saying. Conversely, if I know I tend to coldly distance myself from others, I might opt to correct that by making a point of calling or video chatting. </p>
<p>If I tend to give in to pressure too easily, I might switch to a format like email that lets me consider a request before getting back to someone – not just to get around this tendency, but to practice saying “no.”</p>
<p>It’s tempting to try to pin all the blame on a technology. It can also be appealing to think that it will automatically improve our lives. But many technologies have both good and bad effects on us, and wise use will help maximize the good effects and avoid the bad. </p>
<p>Researchers who looked at the impact of cellphones on interpersonal relationships, for example, found that cellphone use among close friends and family had real positive and negative results. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444811415047">Cellphone use</a> was implicated in users’ tendency to depend on each other. On one hand, this dependency was associated with increased satisfaction with the relationship. </p>
<p>But, on the other hand, cellphone use was also associated with reports of overdependence. The researchers reported some users feeling a sense of “entrapment,” and a sense of “guilt and pressure” to respond, which led to dissatisfaction in relationships. </p>
<p>It’s true that it is hard to choose the right communication channel because the issue is quite context dependent. But we can use some of these guidelines to think through our options. And in many cases, we can use technology to help us become the people we want to be.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at <a href="mailto:ethical.questions@theconversation.com">ethical.questions@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexis Elder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From asking a partner to pick up dinner on the way home to checking in on a neighbor with health problems, we frequently face the question, ‘What’s the best way to communicate?’Alexis Elder, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota DuluthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/905922018-02-13T09:10:14Z2018-02-13T09:10:14ZHow to digitally disentangle after a break up – some new rules<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205928/original/file-20180212-58331-ekowo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/broken-heart-lollipop-377424988?src=_TmUc7QVGrKFoI_NEalh8w-1-2">Stas Knop/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Digital technologies can be great when <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-year-new-you-the-ups-and-downs-of-online-dating-53083">looking for love</a>, and displaying togetherness to the world. But for those who are facing Valentine’s Day with a newly broken heart, we offer a more useful gift than roses or chocolates. Inspired by Dua Lipa’s pithy advice in her hit song, <a href="https://genius.com/Dua-lipa-new-rules-lyrics#note-12660669">New Rules</a>, we have produced a practical checklist for how to deal with the digital aftermath of a romantic break up.</p>
<h2>1) ‘Don’t pick up the phone’</h2>
<p>As tempting as it might be to check up on your ex online, don’t do it. Yes, it’s easy to take a peek at your ex’s Facebook profile or Instagram feed and see what they’ve been up to, without them ever knowing you were there, but still …</p>
<p>This kind of Facebook “stalking” is fairly common, but it <a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-stalking-your-ex-can-become-addictive-and-hurt-you-in-the-long-run-49515">really isn’t a good idea</a>. It can lead to an increase in longing and sexual desire for your ex, levels of distress, and negative feelings, as well as a decrease in personal growth post-break up. Every time you visit your ex’s profile, it makes moving on that much harder for you (but doesn’t affect them in the slightest). Why put yourself through the pain?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k2qgadSvNyU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>2) ‘Don’t let him (or her) in’</h2>
<p>When you’re in a relationship, all of the different ways you have of keeping in touch with your partner online are the bee’s knees. Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, or Google make keeping up-to-date with each other so easy; but what about after a break up? Suddenly the WhatsApp thread that you used to make plans together can turn into a direct line for your ex to get a hold of you, while the location data you shared with each other on Google can make stalking you infinitely easier. What about the passwords you shared, or the logins you saved on your ex’s laptop – how much access does your ex actually have to you and your online accounts?</p>
<p>After a break up, take steps to reduce their access. Some social media platforms such as Facebook have an option to end sessions on particular devices, and others, such as Google, give you the option of logging out of all devices. Consider changing your passwords or adding extra security to your accounts with two-step verification. You can also turn off location services on your mobile phone and other devices.</p>
<h2>3) ‘Don’t be his (or her) friend’</h2>
<p>This one is tricky. After you break up, should you “unfriend” your ex, and sever connections across social media? Severing your online connections might seem brutal, yet a big part of being able to move on after a break up is about being separate from your ex, both on and offline. </p>
<p>If you don’t want to completely sever connections, there are other options. A good one is to add your ex to your “restricted list” on Facebook. This sneaky option means that it looks like you’re still friends with your ex, but you only share your posts with them when you choose “public” as the audience, or when you tag them in a post. And you can still see their posts – even though you know that’s not a good idea.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205927/original/file-20180212-58312-1h9if3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hit that button.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/unfriend-word-on-red-keyboard-button-512569324?src=ANHG0-R3mt5_BegzYEXScg-1-0">Kunst Bilder/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>4) ‘If you’re under them, you ain’t getting over them’</h2>
<p>Facebook “pushes” content at us. It reminds us of our own past posts, based on their popularity. It alerts us to new posts by the people who are important to us.</p>
<p>On a bad day, you could get notifications about your ex’s current activities and reminders of memories of happier days as a couple. To dodge these bullets, do two things. First, alter your Facebook “on this day preferences” to remove people (your ex) or significant dates, and stop those unwelcome memories from coming at you. </p>
<p>Second (if you are still Facebook “friends” with your ex), change the preferences for your news feed. There is an option to “prioritise who to see first”. Take that little blue star off of your ex’s photo, and their updates will no longer be top of your Facebook feed.</p>
<h2>5) ‘He (or she) doesn’t love me’</h2>
<p>If you have set your “status” on your Facebook profile to indicate romantic togetherness - for example, in a relationship, engaged, civil partnership – you may want to change it. A change from togetherness to singledom will only appear on your timeline if you choose for it to do so.</p>
<p>Sharing news of the break up with your friends on social media can be like ripping off a plaster – painful but you only have to do it once. However, breaking the news will likely generate responses from your friends – for better or for worse. And if your friends aren’t too tech-savvy, those opinions <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-digital-natives-are-not-clueless-about-protecting-their-privacy-online-31654">may be quite public</a>. Think about letting your friends know that you’d rather communicate privately with them about the break up, online or offline.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205926/original/file-20180212-58315-1p60rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Be careful about what you say online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portugal-europe-11-january-2017-top-559003165?src=yo1kxTC1rpY8v_w8MH7VYQ-1-85">ARIMAG / Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>6) ‘I’ve got new rules’ (for using my Netflix)</h2>
<p>If you were cohabiting, it’s likely that you shared online accounts for everything from utilities to media streaming services like Spotify. Often, these accounts are intended to be used by just one person, and are password protected.</p>
<p>If you are the account holder, change your passwords. Now.</p>
<p>If you are not the account holder, get all of the details that you need from the accounts (for example the name of your electricity provider, the Game of Thrones episode you were watching) before your ex changes the password and you lose access.</p>
<h2>7) ‘Write it down and read it out’</h2>
<p>It’s tempting to make it look like you are coping really well and having an amazing time in your newfound singledom, by posting only very positive images and text about your fun activities and new friends. If your aim is to show your ex that you are doing great without them, go right ahead.</p>
<p>But bear in mind that if your friends see those same posts, they may be less likely to offer you their support, exactly because you look like you are doing fine.</p>
<p>So make good use of your online social media, and make it a force for good after a romantic break up. Don’t look at what your ex is doing. Do let your friends know that you need them. And things will start to look up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Moncur receives funding from EPSRC, the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) and Microsoft Research.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Herron receives funding for his PhD research from the EPSRC via a DTP.</span></em></p>Seven rules for break up in the digital age.Wendy Moncur, Interdisciplinary Professor of Digital Living, University of DundeeDaniel Herron, PhD Candidate, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/904482018-02-05T04:15:47Z2018-02-05T04:15:47ZHow cyberbullies overtly and covertly target their victims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204139/original/file-20180131-38219-1ibo0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyberbullying isn't always the 'trolling' we hear about in the media. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-12/dolly-everett-memorial-in-katherine/9323118">hear a lot</a> about cyberbullying, but we hear less about what it actually constitutes. Cyberbullying is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18363945">defined</a> as an aggressive, intentional act using electronic forms, repeatedly and over time, against a victim who can’t easily defend against it.</p>
<p>As technology evolves continuously, cyberbullying originally was restricted to the sending of emails and texts. But now it can include image-sharing, online communities, blogs and forums, and sharing of personal information. </p>
<p>While cyberbullying is an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X12004132">iteration of traditional bullying</a>, victims of cyberbullying often have <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13632752.2012.704316">worse outcomes</a> than victims of traditional bullying. And a <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1403494814525004">combination</a> of traditional bullying and cyberbullying has the most severe negative impact on mental health.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-protect-young-people-from-cyberbullying-14753">How can we protect young people from cyberbullying?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Cyberbullying can include both overt (name calling, mocking, shaming) or covert (exclusion, isolation) aspects. </p>
<p>Cyberbullying can involve written-verbal behaviours such as phone calls, text messages and comments on social media. Two specific examples of written forms of cyberbullying are the well-known “trolling” (purposefully posting hurtful comments to provoke a response), and flaming (an array of aggressive comments from one to another). </p>
<p>Other forms of cyberbullying involve:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>visual behaviours: posting, sending or sharing pictures or videos, usually to cause embarrassment</p></li>
<li><p>exclusion: intentionally excluding someone from an online group or, in the case of online gaming, excluding a player from groups or teams</p></li>
<li><p>catfishing: falsifying online identities to trick the victim into romantic relationships</p></li>
<li><p>impersonation: using the victim’s name and account to damage the victim</p></li>
<li><p>stalking: for example sending multiple text messages to the victim to show the bully knows exactly what they are doing, where they have been</p></li>
<li><p>threatening violence: for example threatening some form of traditional bullying, such as a physical fight.</p></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/blocking-kids-from-social-media-wont-solve-the-problem-of-cyberbullying-66280">Blocking kids from social media won't solve the problem of cyberbullying</a>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204142/original/file-20180131-38206-1a89zm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cyberbullies can create fake accounts, or convince others to post content they don’t realise is hurtful to the cybervictim.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These forms of cyberbullying occur in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1053078913Z.0000000007?scroll=top&needAccess=true">one of three ways</a>: direct, by proxy, or by public post (to a wide audience). </p>
<p>Direct attacks are between the bully and victim only, and the identity of the former is known by the latter. Whereas “by proxy” attacks are indirect, and the bully typically tricks someone else into cyberbullying the victim. This means the bully convinces someone else to post something online about the victim, with that person not realising it’s intended to hurt or embarrass the victim. </p>
<p>Cyberbullying may also involve the posting of the above-mentioned behaviours to a wide audience via social media, a website or a blog. This can include creating a false social media account of another person.</p>
<p>Cyberbullying can occur on any number of platforms. It can occur via social networking sites such as Facebook or Instagram, or through popular apps such as Snapchat. It can also occur through text messages and emails, or via question-and-answer type platforms such as askFM (an anonymous platform for asking people questions). There’s no way of knowing which platform could be used to cyberbully someone and there’s not always a preference. </p>
<p>Though direct and public cyberbullying are both very serious, young people perceive public cyberbullying <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-012-9867-3">to be worse</a> than the private form, with anonymous attacks being more severe than non-anonymous.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-can-be-bad-for-youth-mental-health-but-there-are-ways-it-can-help-87613">Social media can be bad for youth mental health, but there are ways it can help</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>Why do young people cyberbully eachother?</h2>
<p>There are many reasons young people cyberbully each other. While traditional bullies <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01229.x/abstract">lack empathy</a>, technology tends to magnify this due to the anonymity it can provide, as well as the lack of an immediate visible response from the victim that is often evident in traditional bullying. So cyberbullying can often be considered “easier”, as the bully does not have to face the victim or see their response. In a sense, it may involve “less effort” than traditional bullying.</p>
<p>It’s well documented that victims of cyberbullying can have serious <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/1840250">mental health concerns</a>. Similarly, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19387347"><em>being</em> a cyberbully</a> is linked to more maladaptive behaviours (inability to cope with certain environments) and social anxiety problems. </p>
<p>But those who are categorised as cyberbully-victims (individuals who engage in cyberbullying both as victims <em>and</em> as bullies) experience <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25572385">the most severe problems</a>, being more depressed and anxious than those who are solely cybervictims or cyberbullies, or not involved in cyberbullying.</p>
<p>It’s obvious cyberbullying among young people needs to be stamped out. While banning social media altogether is not a practical solution, educating young people about respectful behaviour towards others, and reminding them about the terrible consequences associated with cyberbullying, may one day sink in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larisa McLoughlin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cyberbullying is everywhere and is not going away - so what do bullies specifically do?Larisa McLoughlin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Sunshine Coast Mind and Neuroscience Thompson Institute, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/841422017-09-21T10:14:26Z2017-09-21T10:14:26ZCould Snapchat’s biggest selling point now be its downfall?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186808/original/file-20170920-15005-170riyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C43%2C2810%2C1701&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-usa-june-23-2017-665858341?src=oB1aaxA2hc9beLyrfilUDw-1-82">PixieMe/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Snapchat launched in 2011, ephemerality was its unique selling point. Its self-destructing photo and video messages were a stark departure from established social media platforms, which encouraged users to construct and populate content-laden profiles. Disappearing “Snaps” may have gained traction initially as a discrete <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2013/jun/26/snapchat-self-destructing-message-app-phenomenon">way of sexting</a>, but their transient nature turned out to have a broader appeal. </p>
<p>Users embraced Snapchat as a way to share the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/14/snapchat-sexting-study_n_5574642.html">insignificant, silly, mundane, or simply less polished</a> moments of everyday life. Moments not deemed Instagram-, Twitter- or Facebook-worthy, could be shared as ephemeral Snaps. As Snapchat co-founder, Evan Spiegel, put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It’s about communicating with the full range of human emotion – not just what appears to be pretty or perfect.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Things looked promising for Snapchat. In 2013, the company introduced Snapchat Stories, a montage of Snaps broadcast simultaneously to the user’s entire contact list for a 24-hour period. The following year saw the introduction of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ad-2014-10?IR=T">Snapchat advertising</a>, enabling firms to broadcast to the app’s growing user base, and providing Snapchat with a growing revenue stream. So confident was Snapchat in its future success, that it <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-rejection-why-snapchat-turned-down-facebooks-offer-20354">declined Facebook’s acquisition offer</a> of US$3 billion in 2013.</p>
<h2>Copycats</h2>
<p>Success breeds emulation. In 2016, Facebook-owned Instagram released its own Stories feature, mirroring the functionality of Snapchat Stories. Facebook followed suit in 2017 with its own Stories function. The emergence of such copycat features has <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/05/can-snapchat-survive-if-facebook-copies-all-its-best-features">naturally raised questions</a> about Snapchat’s longevity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186813/original/file-20170920-25115-1rbvlrn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Muscling in?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chiangmai-thailand-june-19-2017-hand-662534779?src=_MP84akjaYbfMIcg9Vt_fw-3-44">Narapirom/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Snapchat’s monthly active <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/slowchat/">user growth rate plummeted</a> from 17.2% per quarter in the middle of 2016 to just 5% at the beginning of this year. Its share price has fallen from a high of more than US$27 and is now trading below its IPO price, <a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/quote/SNAP?ltr=1">at less than US$15</a>. Instagram Stories now has 250m daily users, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/digital/instagram-stories-now-has-250-million-daily-active-users-heating-up-its-rivalry-with-snapchat/">significantly more than Snapchat’s 166m</a>. </p>
<p>How can social media platforms hold onto their user base when their main selling point is emulated elsewhere? </p>
<h2>Ensnarement</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/685474">My recent work</a>, in collaboration with fellow UK academics Mike Molesworth and Janice Denegri-Knott, argues that the longevity of many social media platforms can be attributed to what we term “consumer ensnarement”. In stark contrast to Snapchat, most social media platforms encourage users to continually upload content that becomes part of a lasting profile. In doing so, users simultaneously create the platform and tie themselves to it. </p>
<p>Consider Facebook. There has been speculation for many years that users, particularly younger age groups, <a href="https://theconversation.com/facebooks-so-uncool-but-its-morphing-into-a-different-beast-21548">would soon abandon the platform</a>, yet this hasn’t materialised. The company has faced backlash against layout and functionality changes, <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/net-us-facebook-security/facebook-admits-year-long-data-breach-exposed-6-million-users-idUSBRE95K18Y20130621">data leaks</a>, and increasing commercialisation, and yet still it retains <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/">1.32 billion daily active users</a>. In July 2017, Facebook reported a total quarterly revenue of $9.32 billion, <a href="https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_news/2017/FB-Q2'17-Earnings-Release.pdf">up 45% from the previous year</a>. The future for Facebook, it seems, is still bright. </p>
<p>Facebook’s longevity can, in part, be attributed to the value its users attach to the content they have uploaded, annotated and curated. The social media giant encourages users to upload and “tag” photographs and videos, organise them into meaningful albums, and provide up-to-date information in the form of status updates. Collectively, this content holds significant value to users.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186815/original/file-20170920-25115-hob23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hands up Facebook fans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/minsk-belarus-july-2017-concept-many-674905654?src=1iDKkfmBWuKCg9zWcpu0MA-3-87">AlesiaKan/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, though we rarely reflect on it and may be reluctant to admit it, our Facebook profiles have become important digital possessions. They have become unintentional digital scrapbooks, with years of updates memorialising cherished moments and narrating our lives. </p>
<p>This produces a new form of consumer “lock-in” whereby users are not bound by brand loyalty, but by their own uploads. The more time and effort individuals put into their profiles, the more difficult it becomes for them to leave the platform. If such ensnarement is integral to the commercial success and longevity of social media companies, what does this mean for Snapchat?</p>
<h2>Holding on to Snappers?</h2>
<p>Disappearing Snaps create no digital scrapbook of uploaded content. Aside from users’ networks of contacts, which would need to be recreated on other platforms, what does the user leave behind when they abandon Snapchat? Without the ensnarement mechanisms that tie consumers to competing platforms, how can Snapchat prevent its user base from vanishing just as quickly as its Snaps?</p>
<p>Snapchat could focus on creating new, distinct features that provide a competitive advantage. Yet we have seen multiple times in recent years that innovations in social media are quickly emulated. Facebook’s repeated emulation of competitors is argued to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks-willingness-to-copy-rivals-apps-seen-as-hurting-innovation/2017/08/10/ea7188ea-7df6-11e7-a669-b400c5c7e1cc_story.html?utm_term=.a0a961af3985">hinder innovation</a> in the market. </p>
<p>In fact, Facebook has not only emulated Snapchat’s Stories function, but has more recently announced the launch of filters that emulate <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-filters-like-snapchat">Snapchat’s fun lenses</a>, another distinguishing feature of the platform. Without mechanisms of ensnarement, further innovation does not guarantee future success.</p>
<p>One opportunity does exist in Snapchat’s “Memories” function, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/snapchat-memories-feature-what-is-it-self-destruction-store-posts-for-later-a7124811.html">launched mid-2016</a>. In contrast to the app’s initial focus on transient, disappearing Snaps, Memories enables users to keep their Snaps, store Snaps within the app or downloading them to their camera roll. </p>
<p>Snapchat Memories creates a different type of digital scrapbook. While other platforms enable us to remember the polished versions of our lives presented on the likes of Facebook and Instagram, a montage of Snaps may capture the parts of our lives that would otherwise be edited out – the silly, mundane, unpolished, but nonetheless important and valued moments.</p>
<p>With the capacity to download Snaps, how can Snapchat encourage Snappers to create and interact with these digital scrapbooks in-app? The real potential of Snapchat Memories lies in “smart” functions that enrich users’ interactions with their content. Users can search not only by keyword, but also by recognised objects, and are presented with collections of Snaps taken in their current location or posted on the same date in previous years (emulating Facebook’s ‘On This Day’ function). These features have received limited attention, overshadowed in part by the subsequent launch of Instagram Stories, however such features provide value in storing content within the app itself and facilitate the type of ensnarement mechanism utilised by the company’s competitors.</p>
<p>Ephemerality may have been the source of Snapchat’s early success, however its ability to capture an honest, imperfect and <em>lasting</em> picture of its users’ lives may be its best hope for survival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84142/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Mardon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While every other social media platform seeks to tie users in through content-rich profiles, the transient nature of Snaps means the company needs to find a new hook.Rebecca Mardon, Lecturer in Marketing, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824582017-08-15T13:59:37Z2017-08-15T13:59:37ZPopularity of latest ‘honesty app’ Sarahah shows how much we desire validation, whatever the cost<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182072/original/file-20170815-18355-1k6fyxj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sarahah app urges users to send 'constructive' messages, but cyberbullying is rife.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarahaha</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new app called <a href="https://www.sarahah.com/Home/About">Sarahah</a> (which is Arabic for “honesty”) launched its English-language version this summer, promising an anonymous way of offering supportive criticism for teams in the workplace. It has since attracted <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-40846321/sarahah-the-honesty-app-that-s-got-everyone-talking">300m users</a> and reached the top of Apple’s App Store download charts in more than 30 countries, but already users say they are <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/sarahah-app-store-bullying-harassment-2017-7">receiving harassing and obscene messages</a>.</p>
<p>Sarahah’s designers state the app allows users to “get honest feedback from your co-workers and friends” to “help people self-develop by receiving constructive anonymous feedback”. Users sign up for an account and receive a link they can share on other social media sites, inviting anyone with access to their profile to send messages anonymously – users sending messages don’t need accounts. In the Arab world where speech is more culturally policed, it was soon <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-39067533">used for declarations</a> of love, homosexuality and much more that would otherwise be forbidden. The 29-year-old Saudi founder, Zain al-Abidin Tawfiq, obviously understood the potential for abuse and included blocking and filtering features to prevent misuse. But with only <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-40846321/sarahah-the-honesty-app-that-s-got-everyone-talking">three staff members</a> the company cannot moderate millions of messages a day.</p>
<p>The English version has been widely adopted by the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/326452/snapchat-age-group-usa/">Snapchat generation of under-25s</a>, reaching the top of the download charts only when Snapchat released updates that allowed its users <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/07/23/the-story-of-sarahah-app/#98NSlmAI0uq4">to link to their Sarahah accounts</a>. And while some users find that Sarahah and honesty apps like it deliver <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/13/16127170/sarahah-app-anonymous-messages-feedback">self-esteem boosting encouragement</a>, cyberbullying is also rife as people take advantage of the one-way anonymity to safely tell their friends and classmates all the things they wouldn’t dare to say to their faces.</p>
<p>In a review of the app on the Google app store, user Jordan Adams wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was really cool at first because it was jokes with friends and stuff. Then someone sent my address and I got really freaked out. Then people were sending me a bunch of perverted stuff. I would delete my account but it won’t let me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also on Google Play, parents Paul and Olivia Parsons wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our daughter used it for a day and at first nice comments but slowly more mean comments started coming in … the last one before she deleted it told her to kill herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182093/original/file-20170815-17703-fktlqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You can ask for comments, but you may not like them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-group-people-looking-phone-they-572400388">djile/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Not the first, nor the last</h2>
<p>For researchers like myself, there is a strong sense of Groundhog Day about Sarahah. The first in the long line of semi-anonymous comment apps was Formspring, launched in 2009 and referred to in <a href="http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/family-friends-shocked-at-cyberposts-after-teen-s-death-1.1827393">teenage suicide cases in the US</a> and in <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/8653867/Teenager-in-rail-suicide-was-sent-abusive-message-on-social-networking-site.html">Britain</a>. The owner redesigned the site and took part in bullying prevention strategies, but the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/ask-fm-claims-its-overtaken-qa-giant-formspring-whats-going-on-here/">original concept was cloned</a> by a Latvian team as Ask.fm, and was also <a href="http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/8378/">linked to several teenage suicides</a>. </p>
<p>Other controversial anonymity apps have included Yik Yak – which <a href="https://www.change.org/p/tyler-droll-and-brooks-buffington-shut-down-the-app-yik-yak">closed this year</a> – and After School and Secret. They all offer the same thing: a tantalising opportunity for the user to find out what people “really” think of them, combined with the temptation for the sender to be brutally cruel to someone who has “asked for it”.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/8378/1/8378_binns.pdf">my research of Ask.fm and Formspring</a>, teenage girls were split between those who strongly blamed the bullies for “sending hate” and those who blamed the receiver for signing up to the service in the first place. Some girls said people who complained about bullying on anonymous sites were attention-seeking, shouldn’t be online if they were so sensitive, and shouldn’t “act surprised” that the comments weren’t all positive.</p>
<p>This same victim-blaming is already apparent in <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sarahah.android&hl=en_GB">Sarahah’s reviews</a>, some of which appear to have been repeatedly cut and pasted while awarding the app five stars. An example: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For all you people complaining that this promotes bullying is totally wrong. It is completely the user’s fault for putting themselves online for anyone to say anything anonymously about them. It’s simple, if you don’t want to get bullied, just don’t use the app. Don’t fish for comments and complain.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Peer review</h2>
<p>This victim-blaming disregards the enormous drive young people have for validation from their peers, which is unfortunately most strong among the more sensitive souls: those who don’t fit in, or who may have already experienced bullying. Rachel Simmons, in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Odd-Girl-Out-Revised-Updated-Rachel-Simmons/0547520190">Odd Girl Out</a>, her work on teenage girls, described this desire to ascertain social worth as a “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HY0PC1g2aW8C&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=toxic,+self-reinforcing+cycle+rachel+simmons&source=bl&ots=2ocjA9eIwH&sig=rjypxB3zoqEIhG5Uwr_cHU3tytw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwio1MDi-9jVAhVHKcAKHVRpCWIQ6AEINDAC#v=onepage&q=toxic%2C%20self-reinforcing%20cycle%20rachel%20simmons&f=false">toxic, self-reinforcing cycle</a>”. One-way anonymous apps such as Sarahah lure in users with the promise of peer validation much like the promise of water in a desert. But comments can be particularly hurtful, because they come from people who know the users well: they know who you fancy, what you wore to the party, what you said – and they can use it against you.</p>
<p>How to tackle this problem? The cyclical appearance of these apps and their huge popularity shows they are meeting a deep need and won’t be easily eradicated, however regularly they cause problems – or even suicides. But there are some basic safeguards to take: most obviously to hire large numbers of human moderators, to create and monitor a prominent “report abuse” button, and to partner with experts in bullying prevention, something <a href="http://www.childnet.com/blog/askfm-support-childnet">Ask.fm has now done</a>.</p>
<p>However, these are the actions of established companies, not barely-funded start-ups. Perhaps the responsibility really lies with the app stores who host them: Google and Apple. These well-staffed, profitable companies could insist that semi-anonymous messaging services meet basic standards before they appear on the store, rather than simply sticking a “parental guidance” rating on it that most parents will never see. There are plenty of examples of how these apps go wrong. It’s about time they started learning from past mistakes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Binns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Apps inviting anonymous comments play upon our desire to know our social standing, but are an open goal for bullies.Amy Binns, Senior Lecturer, Journalism and Digital Communication, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/823812017-08-11T13:52:01Z2017-08-11T13:52:01ZHas Facebook finally given up chasing teenagers? It’s complicated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181780/original/file-20170811-13446-1iv9dp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Facebook Watch.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facebook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Facebook’s latest attempt to appeal to teens has <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/08/facebook-shutters-teen-social-app-lifestage/">quietly closed its doors</a>. The social media platform’s Lifestage app (so unsuccessful that this is probably the first time you’ve heard of it) was launched a little under a year ago to resounding apathy and has struggled ever since.</p>
<p>Yet, as is Silicon Valley’s way, Facebook has rapidly followed the failure of one venture with the launch of another one by unveiling <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-watch-muscles-into-online-video/">a new video streaming service</a>. Facebook Watch will host series of live and pre-recorded short-form videos, including some original, professionally made content, in a move that will allow the platform to more directly compete with the likes of YouTube, Netflix and traditional TV channels.</p>
<p>Lifestage was just one of a long series of attempts by Facebook to stem the tide of young people <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/">increasingly interacting across multiple platforms</a>. With Watch, the company seems to have changed tack from this focus on retaining young people, instead targeting a much wider user base. Perhaps Facebook has learnt that it will simply never be cool –, but that doesn’t mean it still can’t be popular.</p>
<p>Lifestage was intended to compete with the increasingly popular Snapchat, the photo and video-sharing app especially <a href="http://www.emarketer.com/Chart/US-Snapchat-User-Penetration-by-Age-2017-of-social-network-users-each-group/207836">popular among teenagers</a>. But the spin-off was never able to achieve the user numbers necessary to sustain the venture. Worryingly for Facebook, this is the third failed attempt to emulate Snapchat’s success among teens, following the short-lived <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/05/09/rip-facebook-poke/#UAGyLIbFSsqx">Facebook Poke</a> and <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/3012463/iphone-ipad/facebook-kills-its-creative-labs-responsible-for-apps-that-failed-against-snapchat.html">Facebook Slingshot</a>, which also came to quiet and unceremonious ends. Facebook has also incorporated several of Snapchat’s features such as its Stories function directly into its main app, to a <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/05/02/no-one-uses-facebook-stories/#PmNsSCTkhaqG">lukewarm reception</a>.</p>
<p>This comes as the social media market continues to expand rapidly. Competition is fierce and numerous established companies are vying with start-ups and rising brands to catch the attention of a growing and <a href="https://wearesocial.com/special-reports/digital-in-2017-global-overview">increasingly connected user base</a>.</p>
<p>No longer do one or two companies hold a monopoly on the social media landscape. Most teenagers <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/">are increasingly using</a> more than one platform for their online interactions (though noticeably this trend does appear to be <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0163443717691225">somewhat different outside the Western world)</a>. Young people are experimenting with new formats and ways of interacting, from short videos and disappearing messages, to anonymous feedback apps such as Sarahah, the latest craze to <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/07/31/sarahah-popularity/">explode in popularity</a> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/10/sarahah-everyone-talking-honesty-first-secret-messaging-app/">excite media commentators</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181783/original/file-20170811-13511-1az13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">I don’t want my mum to see this.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Yet despite these issues, Facebook is still the world’s <a href="http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/">most popular</a> social media platform by quite some distance and has more than <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/">2 billion users worldwide</a>. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/199242/social-media-and-networking-sites-used-by-us-teenagers/">Recent data</a> suggests it is almost as popular as Snapchat among teens and young users, as is Facebook’s other photo-sharing app, <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170421113306.htm">Instagram</a>.</p>
<p>The problem, of course, is that Facebook’s popularity – and, crucially, the platform’s simplistic and user-friendly design – means teenagers’ parents, teachers, bosses and even grandparents now also use the platform. For teens, that means the platform has become a headache of competing and conflicting social obligations, with various aspects and contexts of their life collapsing into a single space.</p>
<p>The young people I talk to <a href="dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3097292">for my research</a> suggest that Facebook’s broad appeal and easy design presents a unique experience for them. Facebook is a field of potential social landmines, with the fear that the diverse user base will see everything they post – causing anxiety, hedging and inaction.</p>
<p>Having to negotiate this broad audience means young people seem to be less likely to use of some of the public aspects of Facebook, choosing instead to rely on aspects such as groups and private messaging. This explains why they seem to be increasingly relying more on platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat to interact with their peers, a trend also noted <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/">by other researchers</a>.</p>
<p>In this light, the attempt to encourage teenagers to use the same features as they do on Snapchat when Facebook’s brand is so associated with a more public and socially difficult environment seems inherently flawed. We can’t say where the company will go in the future but it seems likely it will struggle to ever be as central to young people’s online social experiences as it once was.</p>
<h2>Watch targets a wider audience</h2>
<p>Yet the launch of Facebook Watch suggests perhaps the company has learnt its lesson. The new service is an attempt to create a broader space that can appeal to their wide user base, rather than aiming content, ideas and spaces specifically at teens and young people.</p>
<p>With the announcement of the video-sharing service, Facebook has put out a call for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/09/facebook-new-video-feature-watch-youtube-rival">“community orientated” original shows</a>. It will provide users with video recommendations based on what others – and in particular their friends – are watching. In this way, Facebook Watch will allow users to find content that reflects their interests and friendships, whoever they are. Rather than attempting to retain and target a specific demographic, Facebook Watch appears to be acknowledging the platform’s broader appeal.</p>
<p>This seems to match Facebook’s moves away from being a pure social networking platform and towards a much broader one-stop hub for news and content. With the launch of Watch, users need never leave the walled garden of Facebook as they can view both content embedded from around the web and original videos hosted on the site. And with Facebook already ranked <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-watch-muscles-into-online-video/">second only to YouTube</a> for online video content, again this move looks like an attempt to cater to a much broader market than teens alone.</p>
<p>The fact that Facebook seems increasingly keen to nurture its more diverse user base is likely to be a continuing concern for young people worried about their interactions on the platform. But, on the other hand, given <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/teens-watching-netflix-youtube-more-than-tv-2017-5">YouTube’s massive appeal to the teen market</a>, Watch may serve as a way to entice teens back to Facebook. Really, there’s only one way to sum up young people’s relationship with Facebook: it’s complicated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82381/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harry T Dyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Facebook’s new video platform, Watch, suggests the social platform may have given up on copying Snapchat.Harry T Dyer, Lecturer in Education, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.