Who Will Answer the Mother of All Questions as Anti-Social Facebook Faces Reality Check?

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere…” Elie Wiesel

Well, well, well … the chickens have finally come home to roost and the fox is trapped and documented.

To open the door, it took a conscientious whistleblower, Frances Haugen, a data scientist with a computer engineering degree and a Harvard MBA who wanted to work against misinformation because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories on Facebook.

She released tens of thousands of pages of internal research and documents to lawyers and SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) replete with evidence that Facebook was aware of several problems caused by its apps like Instagram with its “toxic” effect on teen girls.

In a Senate subcommittee hearing she testified, “I believe that Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy … the company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”

And so, the battle will continue perhaps for years as offense lawyers battle defense lawyers to urge the government to regulate this Social Media giant. And so, many debates will roll out between adults, some elderly with lesser experience, as they discuss “human trafficking” or “domestic servitude” or freedom of hate speech or responsibilities to shareholders.

But who will listen to the most vulnerable victims, the subset of teen girls with life-long scars, the future of mothers-to-be?

For many years now, the saddest part, is how Adolescent Brain research has statistically confirmed the negative hyperbolic media influence on the developing brain prone to cooperative peer pressure and likeability factors. Over and over we heard the statement that logical thinking processes don’t mature until the early twenties and yet here the innocent children were making adult orientated decisions to please the corporate algorithms, mostly for male views.

Now there is only more tragic verification how Facebook’s antisocial promotions really were meant to antagonize and polarize to get more reactions for clicks. It is deeply disturbing that especially our teen girls have grown up in this environment as cell phone addicts with their sense of social rites of passage and a productive healthy self forever modified to fit a false narrative.

I wonder how their lost development and maturity will be addressed by the legal teams since the psychological damage has now perpetuated for two decades since the advent of the cellphone and Selfie worship.

Will the legal teams get around to discuss how to remediate these teen social media struggles when time cannot be reversed?

Will they try to find answers or solutions to these dilemmas:

...how lack of primer definitions about power and features of social media meant more exposure to bad choices

…how ideal body images mandated breast, lip and butt enhancements by pressure and profiteers

…how a self-infatuated mother may treat her selfie children or may not want motherhood at all

…how beauty, influencers or mob mentality rule teen girls on Instagram, Fan Fiction and YouTube videos

…how does social media affect education or e-learning with 5 problems

…how the norms of culture itself have been transformed by clicks or tweets with music, literature, politics, and science where self-inflation not public good rules the day.

The Biggest Mother of all Questions

Which young woman will testify about how her timeline has been radicalized by Facebook’s manipulation on behalf of her sisterhood?

How will she describe how her young brain was targeted and modulated by anger, anxiety, depression, and emotions so she couldn’t sleep or do well in school?

How will she account for the stew of neurochemicals like dopamine, adrenaline, and cortisol which controlled her behavior to be “liked” or hated or consider suicide as an alternative (30 % possibility)?

How can she explain her addiction to this powerful neural feedback loop that exploited her feelings of weakness to belong to society’s expectations on her personal screen?

Consider how challenging it will be to now disconnect from this learned behavior, so often based on fraud, to reclaim her life and her children’s attitudes to believe in positive self-esteem and connections that celebrate unity and true cultural achievement.

In fact, the general question for everyone is how to become more self-aware knowing that Facebook’s successful conclusion was that angry content is what people want because that is what WE respond to.

Facebook will continue to be a mega-giant on a planetary scale far beyond messaging or sharing photos at whatever age. Its platforms are critical for doing business, virtual learning, politics, medical emergencies and much more. When Facebook was shut down for 6 hours, the world took a deep breath not to panic.

Facebook is 17 years old, started on Feb. 2004. As it comes of age to realize the energy growth of being one of the first pioneers, it will also cull its mistakes and regroup its priorities for positive connections with or without regulations.

Until then it will be our individual responsibility to watch our actions and protect our children especially teen girls.

Annemarie Berukoff

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Index for Timely Tale for Teen Girls Struggles, Regrets ands Survival on Social Media with a Superpower Tool

The Tragedy of Teen Girls Blindsided and Dumb to Social Media Alarm Bells But What Can We Do?

 

The Tragedy of Teen Girls, Blindsided and Dumb, to Social Media Alarm Bells But What Can We Do?

If someone was literally hurting your kids — or making them hurt each other, even if they didn’t want to — what would you do? That is exactly what is happening here. Social Media is Destroying a Generation of Young People, Especially Women

Once again, the public is paying attention to frantic red flags while the sirens are wailing about the attack of social media against teenage girls in particular. Alarm bells are sounding again for parents and psychologists even though they have heard about this effect of too much internet interaction with the Selfie mindset since 2009 when Selfies became the norm and young girls began a competitive ritual to be the most liked, the hottest, the sexiest. The powers that set the algorithm early was to appeal to the male adult gaze.

Hear the newest public commentators below.

The tragic reality is that for the first time society is now paying the price for a generation of young women who have been objectified, scarred, under the pressure to play the game confirming to the hypersexualized beauty standards on Social Media. Hence, the ideal Bachelorettes have a stable of ideal would-be husbands and the Housewives flaunt reality shows with flagrant dramas of wealthy happiness formulas.

Sadly, there is only one group who doesn’t participate in hearing the sorrow and outrage … the innocent victims; namely, the teen girls themselves. Their young adolescent brains haven’t yet developed the frontal cortex connections for deductive thinking and judgment skills based on a maturity level that happens in the early 20’s. Their teen years are prone to learning new experiences often determined by peer pressure. There are no early warning educational programs how to handle this circus.

They are blindsided by seeking their own rewards hour after hour on their cellphones to be worthy of attention to look, dress, and act as implicitly directed or suffer ostracism and depression.

They are dumb to voice their comprehension of reality whether it is real or fake. In their curious innocence they are still learning what works and what doesn’t and that gadget attached to their hand shows what is to be liked and what to ridicule and hate. They do not write about their short time line or how a wrong choice today may derail their future.

They are the innocent lambs led to algorithm slaughter to be a somebody to worship celebrity status regardless of morality. They are the perfect prey to groom without feedback.

But Society knows the facts for a few years now.

The newest teen mental health problems research shows:

1. Half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age but most cases are undetected and untreated.
2. Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents.
3. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in 15–19-year-olds.
4. The consequences of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults.

Society may not quite know what to do

There is no denying that social media is not innocent enough but only if skinny girls are preferred with perfect complexion and popular cosmetics, fashions and followers. The old Selfie mindset immersion is now filtering through new families now.

There is no denying the power of the internet with influencers like Emma Chamberlain, whose occupation is listed as a vlogger and YouTuber. Born in 2001, she is 20 years old, with 10.7 million followers and 1.4 billion views. A perfect internet persona; thin, pretty, petite nose, oval face and large eyes who started posting videos as a way of escaping from depression in high school, now sporting a clothing line, online mail order company whose financial worth is estimated at 8 million dollars.

Not to sidestep the influential bodily enhancements of the K family for 20 years.

But about educational value and self-redemption potential?

Social Media has created the mess that only it can fix

Two possible ideas:

ONE: Start a reality show about teens and their troubles and relationships including drug abuse online.

What teens really need is to go beyond what adults tell them and become actively involved as peer spokespeople and practice scenarios where they can learn to say no. They need to relate to stories of interpersonal skills with normal social interaction over long term.

What more inclusive way, other than first person participation, to watch and relate to a TV reality show about teens, their struggles and redemptions on their favorite mediums?

TWO: Create and popularize a heroine as a short story with an overview of consequences and morals to serve as a real rebuttal to Selfies?

Set a personal narrative obsessed with cell phone Selfies and facing an antagonist of epic proportions to a rash and bash adolescent brain with the theme that is it is not the teenager’s fault where offline time becomes far more important than online with the superpower tool.

Who will write such a story or is there a draft already done looking for a super influencer who cares about children and young women?

Questions and comments are always welcome. Note several related articles in index below.

Annemarie Berukoff

Hear the newest commentators directly:

Facebook recognizes how harmful its photo-sharing app, Instagram, can be for teen girls’ self-esteem, according to company documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. | Fox Business

What Can Facebook Do To Make Instagram less Toxic for Teen Girls

Stunning New Facts about Mental Health Conditions among Teenagers from Who World Health

Index for Timely Tale for Teen Girls Struggles, Regrets and Survival on Social Media