Greater Good Magazine: What Happens When You Take a Facebook Break. “On Monday, November 18, at 1 p.m., I embarked on my own Facebook and Instagram sabbatical—for research purposes, of course. Admittedly, I was curious how I’d spend the extra time—and whether all the curly hair gurus I follow were giving me an inferiority complex.”
mental health
Los Angeles Times: Their kids died on the psych ward. They were far from alone, a Times investigation found
Los Angeles Times: Their kids died on the psych ward. They were far from alone, a Times investigation found. “How many others die in California psychiatric facilities has been a difficult question to answer. No single agency keeps tabs on the number of deaths at psychiatric facilities in California, or elsewhere in the nation. In an effort to assess the scope of the problem, The Times submitted more than 100 public record requests to nearly 50 county and state agencies to obtain death certificates, coroner’s reports and hospital inspection records with information about these deaths.”
EurekAlert: Social media use and disordered eating in young adolescents
EurekAlert: Social media use and disordered eating in young adolescents . “New research suggests that social media, particularly platforms with a strong focus on image posting and viewing, is associated with disordered eating in young adolescents. In the study, which is published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, researchers examined data on 996 grade 7 and 8 adolescents.”
Moms: The Pressure For Perfection On Instagram Is Putting People Into Debt
Moms: The Pressure For Perfection On Instagram Is Putting People Into Debt. “It can be easy to look at your Instagram feed and suddenly feel like your life is lacking in some way. Staring at the perfectly curated and filtered feeds of the young and gorgeous enjoying amazing trips while wearing gorgeous clothes and dining at incredibly hip restaurants can leave some feeling like they’re missing out in some way, and that is resulting in many people going into debt.”
BBC: Facebook removes 11.6 million child abuse posts
BBC: Facebook removes 11.6 million child abuse posts. “Facebook has released the latest figures in its efforts to remove harmful content from its platforms. They reveal 11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation were taken down between July and September 2019. For the first time, Facebook is also releasing figures for Instagram and including numbers for posts related to suicide and self-harm.”
University of New Mexico Health Sciences: The Devil is in the Data
University of New Mexico Health Sciences, and I really really really hate this headline: The Devil is in the Data. “In a paper published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the team reported their finding that instances of self-harm among people with major mental illness seeking medical care might actually be as much as 19 times higher than what is reported in the billing records.”
BBC: The Chinese suicides prevented by AI from afar
BBC: The Chinese suicides prevented by AI from afar. “The Java-based program monitors several ‘tree holes’ on Weibo and analyses the messages posted there. A ‘tree hole’ is the Chinese name for places on the net where people post secrets for others to read. The name is inspired by an Irish tale about a man who confided his secrets to a tree. One example is a post by Zou Fan, a 23-year old Chinese student who wrote a message on Weibo before killing herself, in 2012.”
