Op-Ed: Facebook and Instagram vs the world — A war everyone's losing – Digital Journal

Image: © AFP Let’s start with an obvious fact – Vulnerable people usually don’t do well on social media. For some, it’s catastrophic; as bad as the hideous “normal” high school horror stories. Many people really do suffer horribly. Instagram in particular is getting a lot of flak for its role in mental health issues among teens, especially girls. TIME Magazine has a simple, very efficiently told story about the crash and burn of an Instagram user, covering 9 years of a girl’s life on social media. It’s pretty grim reading, though. From day one to a virtual shopping list of issues years later, this girl really hit the rocks, hard. After nearly a decade, she had to seek medical help. Rather sadly, there’s an all-too-predictable narrative, and it applies across the board. From naïve excitement to a growing and terrifying fear of rejection, the reward process of likes, etc., it’s all there. It’s a virtual map of the hazards.  From body image problems to just plain social bullying, it reads like a market survey. The problem is that it IS a market survey, in so many ways.   Bear in mind this subject of many jagged edges also locks…
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