Like counts are coming back to Instagram
Issue #28
A thumbs up here, a heart there. While we often "Like" things on Facebook and Instagram without giving it much thought, this feature plays a very important role in the functioning of the platform itself, namely in our news feeds. When we show platforms what we react to in real-time, the algorithms behind the scenes can better curate what we see. When we hit Like, we’re essentially telling the algorithm, “More of this type of content, please!” Since 2016, your Instagram feed has been curated by an algorithm that’s learning from your every move. And because the platform feeds you a never-ending list of personalized content, you’re more likely to stick around—and increase their daily and monthly active user count.
Facebook also monetizes your Likes by serving you precisely targeted ads. The platform generates an incredible amount of ad revenue because they know their users so intimately. The kind of data they keep allows companies to serve their ads to a very specific audience, and this kind of personalization has been a major boon for advertisers. While it’s true that some companies are using your Likes to sell you products, otherwise, the feature is harmless, right?
Wrong.
As I wrote about extensively in my book Screen Captured, Likes play to a soft spot in the human psyche and they can make everything you post online feel like a public popularity contest. This pressure is keenly felt by our kids. A Washington Post article looked at this phenomenon in depth and discovered that many young users delete posts that don’t hit their Like threshold. A 13-year-old interview subject, Katherine, shared that her magic number is 100 Likes per post. She also explained how the best part about the platform is the notification box—which tallies her Likes, tags and followers. Katherine, like most younger users, deleted most of what she posted. Her feed only had about 25 images, because the rest simply weren’t popular enough. That's a problem for Instagram, because it leads to less user-generated content, which is essentially the lifeblood of the platform.
So, beginning in 2019, Facebook began testing a new feature that would hide Like counts from everyone except the person who posted the content. When this first debuted, Facebook claimed it was to make people comfortable expressing themselves. The company allegedly wanted users to "focus on the quality of what they share and how it connects them with people they care about, not just the number of people who hit the thumbs-up." They want us to believe that this is all for our mental health. But at the end of the day, Facebook and Instagram are extremely motivated to create a friendly environment where you feel free to post. Their goal here is to continue to grow their user base and bolster the amount of user-generated content.
Fast forward to May 2021: Facebook has tested the hidden like count, and decided to give users the option to hide likes or not. But while the head of Instagram told reporters that they are "always trying to figure out the effects of what we build on people’s lives," they have yet to share any of their own research on the topic. In fact, when congress asked Mark Zuckerberg about the effects of social media on our mental health, all he would say is, "I don't think that the research is conclusive on that."
While it's convenient for Facebook, Zuckerberg is right on this point. Kind of. You can find experts to tell you that screen time is worse than heroine and you can find experts to tell you that it's as harmless as a potato. It'll likely take several more years to come to a decisive conclusion on the issue, and the research we currently have is vulnerable to confirmation bias.
But we do know this for sure: these platforms have used every psychological trick in the book to draw us in—and historically, they’ve shown very little concern for how that might affect our mental health. I believe that if they are trying to remove anxiety around posts, they are doing it to keep us posting. Their latest move allows them to have their cake and eat it too—leaving it up to users to decide whether they want to see likes while crafting the narrative that they care about our mental health.
A deeper dive
Here are a few helpful resources in case you want to really dig into today's topic:
Back in March, while Big Tech CEOs were getting grilled by Congress, they were asked to turn over their internal research about how their platforms affect children. They set a deadline of April 16th, and maybe the tech companies shared something quietly with the government, but we've yet to see any news on that. My guess? If Facebook had conclusive evidence that social media was good for kids—or even evidence that it wasn't bad, we'd all know about it.
Right before that April 16th deadline, a group of child development experts signed an open letter asking Facebook to abandon plans for their Instagram for Kids platform. The letter explains how "[t]he platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing. Younger children are even less developmentally equipped to deal with these challenges, as they are learning to navigate social interactions, friendships, and their inner sense of strengths and challenges during this crucial window of development."
TL;DR
Too long; didn't read. It shouldn't be a full-time job to keep up on industry news, so here is a mercifully quick summary of some other notable developments:
When schools around the world turned to online learning, it was a serious boon for one tech company in particular: Google. They made huge inroads into our kids' classrooms with their suite of education-focused digital tools, and they're eager to hang onto those market gains. The company now has plans to bring Artificial Intelligence into schools with a tool that kids can talk to, asking questions and receiving answers. But, some experts are concerned that "harmful ideas, biases and misleading information" might be embedded in these models.
In many places, students are physically returning to the classroom. And while lots of kids are excited about this in theory, many are experiencing an uptick in anxiety as they transition from remote education to in-person learning. Here are some tips from the experts on how to help your children navigate transition.
And lastly
Here are a few more pieces of original writing from me and my team—just in case you're keen for more:
The research (and rhetoric) around screen time and kids' mental health is unfortunately a grab bag of competing expert opinions. As mentioned above, parents are simultaneously told that screen time is worse than heroine—or as harmless as a potato. I've written before about how tricky it is for parents to make heads or tails of the science when the scientists seem more interested in making a splash than providing useful guidance.
Chromebooks exploded in popularity over the last year, with many kids using them for online learning. This left a lot of parents with a lot of questions about settings and safety, so my team wrote this handy guide to explain the important parental controls.
Okay, that's it from me until next time. If you enjoyed this newsletter, and know of another parent who would as well, please feel free to forward it along.