social media – Learning Aloud

Instagram to Pixelfed

Social media users seem to be living in a period of time when many are questioning their long-time commitments to specific big tech platforms. Perhaps they object to the political leanings of owners and the way they have tweaked the algorithms that generate automatic content feeds in objectionable ways. Perhaps they object to privacy issues that target them both for ads and for other content. For many years, they may have held similar concerns, but felt locked in by the network effect – the accumulation of friends and contacts connected to them and each other.

This has been my personal experience. I became a Twitter member in 2006. That was a long time ago in Internet time. I joined TruthSocial much more recently. I left both platforms a few months ago for a variety of reasons. With Twitter, I was upset with the algorithm that seemed to send me (the “For me” option) more and more content I regarded as misinformation and also lowered the chances I would see posts containing links. Links to interesting content were one of the reasons I had previously found Twitter (not X) to be useful. With TruthSocial, I left because the election of 2024 was over and my interest had been countering the misinformation so common on that platform. There seems little point now.

I am having second thoughts because abandoning those platforms to the infidels seems only a way to change the experience for others. I may change my mind and check in once and a while to explore.

I do think we now have options whether we prefer to commit to individual platforms or maintain a meaningful, active presence on several. The power of the network effect has abated and federated services offer flexibility.

Instagram to Pixelfed

This post describes the expansion of the way I use two photo-heavy or photo-first platforms. Many probably consider Instagram the default in this category. I used Instagram originally to share images with friends and family. Friends and family were also users so it was easy to fall into this commitment. My use expanded beyond sharing images and captions and this transition seemed true of many.

I started using Pixelfed in 2019 which was soon after it was first made available. I take a lot of photos and have had the opportunity to take pictures in many locations. Pixelfed became a way to share some of my best with others interested in photography.

Why change and what will be different?

I was prompted to write this post mostly because Pixelfed just released apps for iOS and Android. The version I had used from my laptop or desktop computer was fine for my focus on sharing my best photos which was my perception of the way others used the platform at that time. Many folks use Instagram on their phones in a broader variety of ways moving seamlessly from collecting images to sharing images to friends and family. It is easy and informal. Pixelfed can be used in the same way and I think the phone-based version will greatly expand the way the platform is used.

You might want to explore an alternative to Instagram because of some of the reasons I have already mentioned. There are other implications that might be less obvious. First, there is the privacy issue. Pixelfed does not host ads and has no need to collect user data to target ads. Second, Pixelfed is a federated service. This means there are multiple hosts referred to as instances some of which may have a unique focus. Hosts with identifiable interests allow users to find and associate with users similar to themselves. Still, users are not limited to a specified topic and you experience content on many different topics. It is a difference in topic density that differentiates such sites from Instagram. For example, Mastodon is a different federated, but related service comparable to Twitter (X). I am a member of two Maston instances which have attracted different types of users. Twit.social is run by a technology podcaster and has mostly folks interested in technology. Mastodon.education as the name implies attracts mostly folks interested in educational issues. Pixelfed works in the same way and multiple hosts are available. I joined the original instance (Pixelfed.social). Here is an interesting difference between Instagram and Twitter and Mastodon and Pixelfed. Users of Mastodon instances can follow my image posts on Pixelfed and most posts will appear in their feeds. So, federation allows this interesting mechanism for both focus and cross-interest sharing.

I use the same user identifier on all federated platforms (grabe – grabe@twit.social, grabe@mastodon.education, and grabe@pixelfed.social). This consistency ends up being helpful as searching for grabe within one of the platforms will find me in all of the instances of all type. I will demonstrate this in detail later in this post.

Pixelfed

For those unfamiliar with PixelFed, it looks and operates very much like Instagram. The following image shows the feed using the iOS app. If you look at the bottom of the one post from the feed that is visible, you should see a + within a red box. This is the button used to bring up the template for submitting your own photo and text.

The following is the empty template for generating a post and the second image a post with a photo and text. The red box in the first image identifies the button used to upload photos from your iOS photos collection.

Following other users from their federated accounts

The easiest way (I think) to follow other users is to conduct a search. The search box should be easy to locate. I may be aware of another user already or identify someone through a discovery feed. In this case, I want to follow my Pixelfed account from one of my Mastodon instances. As I explained earlier, I use “grabe” as my name in all of my instances and the second and third image show the response to searching for “grabe” and the use of the options presented to follow the individual and instance that interests me. Select “Follow” and new content will appear in your feed.

Summary

Hopefully, this post explained several reasons someone might want to use federated social media in place of some of the major platforms or to add social media instances to one’s existing online presence. The specific example proposed that Pixelfed is a reasonable and perhaps desirable alternative to Instagram. Pixelfed is easy to join and use. The opportunity to link across instances of different federated categories was demonstrated and offers some unique experiences not available with the platforms wanting to concentrate users and prevent them from straying.

Adolescent mental health, phones, and schools

I recently listened to Kara Swisher interviewing Jonathan Haidt the author of The Anxious Generation. I checked on this book and it is #1 on the New York Times nonfiction list this week. I provide a comment on the ranking because the ranking would indicate the book was receiving a great deal of attention from the general public and the message must have substantial appeal.

Briefly stated, the book argues that rising anxiety and mental health issues of adolescents are significantly determined by overparenting and the amount of time spent, especially by adolescent females, on social media. I have personal comments related to this issue particularly Haidt’s recommendation for phone use in schools, but I would encourage you to listen to the interview because Swisher pushes back and the interchange offers some useful insights into whether cellphone activity is responsible for an increase in mental health problems.

Certain facts are well established: a) adolescents spend a great amount of time on their cellphones since the introduction and wide purchase of iPhones (this specific event figures heavily in some arguments), and b) beginning before the Covid shutdown and continuing to the present adolescents, particularly females, have shown an increase in mental health issues. The big question, the focus of Haidt’s book, and lots of research (citations will be included) is whether there is a causal relationship such that a significant proportion of the increase in mental health problems can be accounted for by the great amount of online activity mostly using personal phones.

The amount of time adolescents and many of the rest of us spend online is staggering. PEW has done regular surveys of teens to quantify their online activity and provides the following data points.

YouTube (95%), TikTok (67%), Instagram (61%), and Snapchat (60%) are among the most popular social media platforms used by teens.
On average, teens spend 1.9 hours daily on YouTube and 1.5 hours on TikTok, with males spending more time on YouTube and females on TikTok.
Around 35% of teens say they use at least one of the top social media platforms “almost constantly”.

As an aside, one of the “quality studies” Haidt mentioned to support his claim in the Swisher interview involved adult use of Facebook (Allcott et al. 2022). Swisher asked for examples of manipulative research showing that phone use and depression were related and Haidt provided this study. PEW doesn’t have much to say about Facebook activity among adolescents because the level has dropped so low. Haidt acknowledges that few quality studies exist with adolescents because doing manipulative research before the age of 18 is very difficult. This is why so many researchers use college students – they are available and they can participate.

Adolescent mental health issues have increased year by year with a big jump during the COVID years. Data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention tracking depression provide a good example of this trend. The following chart was taken from this report.

So, facts demonstrating adolescents’ heavy use of phones and increasing mental health issues are solid. Now, are these two variables related and how? All I can say is that the research or perhaps more accurately the interpretation of the research is messy. I understand that parents, educators, and policymakers just want the researchers to provide a clear summary, but this just isn’t happening.

You have books such as Haidt’s (I would also recommend Jean Twenge) and medical experts (this summary of research from the National Library of Medicine) offering analyses of the research that come across placing a heavy burden of blame on cell phone use. I can also recommend scholarly meta-analyses of the phone-mental health students to reach just the opposite decision (e.g., Ferguson, et al. 2022). I admit summaries of many of the same research publications that come to very different conclusions are challenging. I read and comment about this type of controversy in other areas (should notes by taken on paper or laptop, are books better understood on paper or from the screen) in which I have read most of the relevant studies and can offer a personal opinion. I am not a clinical psychologist and in this case, I do not want to go on the record telling parents or teachers what they should do about kids and cell phones. If you are interested, I hope I have offered some of the resources you can use to get started.

What I do want to talk about

Getting back to Haidt’s book. Haidt makes several specific recommendations based on his conclusion that cellphone use is damaging.

Schools should be phone free zones
Children should first be provided a phone specialized for communication and not Internet use (e.g., a flip phone)
Adolescents should not have access to a smartphone until high school (but see #1)
Access to social media should be changed from 13 to 16.

Some additional Haidt comments on schools as phone free zones are:

The agreement of schools to ban smartphones is important because a total ban applies to all students and avoids the problem of some students having access and some students not.
School policies such as having access only during class or having phones in backpacks or lockers don’t work.

I do not support classroom bans on smartphones. In part my logic is based in research experience I do have and this work involved cyberbullying. A couple of things I remember from the research are that cyberbullying very rarely originated using school equipment (cell phones were less of an issue at the time), but the targets and originators of cyberbullying typically involved students from the same schools. For this second reason, most assumed schools were in the best position to address the problem. The key point here is that bullying actions originated outside of schools (homes and homes of friends), but schools were in the best position to provide “educational remedies”. Some aspects of the cellphone and mental health issues are similar.

I see classroom use of cellphones as a convenience not that different from the use of laptops, chromebooks, or tablets. All devices could be used to access damaging or useful experiences. However, students would be in a supervised environment, unlike the situation in the home or other locations outside of the classroom. In allowing the use of phones (or other digital devices) teachers do not only monitor use, but have opportunities to focus on productive uses AND explore the damaging issues in a group setting.

You may not agree with my position, but I think the logic is sound and recognizes that phone use is far more frequently unsupervised outside of classrooms than within classrooms. It is easy to target schools and ignore the reality that parents are more likely to ignore what their children are doing on their phones for much longer periods of time. Experiences within schools are not the core source of problems that may exist.

The importance of a whole group experience also has two sides. Yes, if no student can use a phone in school then there are no haves and have nots. Nothing about this solves what happens outside of classrooms. Addressing the issues of what students experience online is going to be more consistent and probably effective when all students experience issues as part of a formal curriculum.

So, I don’t think banning phones in classrooms solves a mental health problem. I think the science on mental health and adolescence is still unclear. I disagree with what Haidt said in response to Swisher’s probing. His position eventually came down to “if it isn’t cellphones then what is it”. When there are positives and negatives associated with an activity (perhaps causally and perhaps not), simple solutions rarely produce a substantial advantage.

References:

Links are provided when possible. Other sources are cited below.

Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2020). The welfare effects of social media. American Economic Review, 110(3), 629-676.

Ferguson, C. J., Kaye, L. K., Branley-Bell, D., Markey, P., Ivory, J. D., Klisanin, D., Elson, M., Smyth, M., Hogg, J. L., McDonnell, D., Nichols, D., Siddiqui, S., Gregerson, M., & Wilson, J. (2022). Like this meta-analysis: Screen media and mental health. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 53(2), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.1037/pro0000426

A video playlist to understand the challenges of social media

I have been interested in the problems of social media for some time. I feel somewhat responsible because I was very excited by what was once called Web 2.0 or the participatory web. There seemed like so many opportunities for engagement and learning at that time for so many areas – politics, education, human interaction on a global scale. With cell phones being so ubiquitous, it seemed a reasonable way for nearly everyone to learn and communicate. I did my best to spread the glad tidings and offer suggestions for the use of technology in classroom settings. If you are reading this, you can assume I tried to influence you. Things have certainly not worked out in the positive way I anticipated. Social media and the Internet have obviously impacted us in many ways and have generated great amounts of revenue for some. However, there are serious problems that need to be recognized and addressed.

My wife and I meet online with a group from our college days every two weeks. As part of these meetings after socialization and catching up, we have a topic for discussion led by one of the participants. It was our turn and I wanted to talk about surveillance capitalism. Several of the participants work in economics and finance with one being a college prof. By definition, we are all social media users as we are meeting with each other via Zoom. Issues with social media seemed to me to be an issue most should find interesting – the Pew Research Center in 2018 found that 68% of U.S. adults use Facebook, 35% use Instagram, and 24% report using Twitter. Even old folks like us are involved. I searched about for a short video I could offer to the group and I intended to generate a shortlist of questions that might guide a discussion. I found it difficult to find a single source that would include the multiple issues I see combining to produce the challenges I see so I picked one of the components I thought might offer a good activation. I was talked out of the idea as something that many folks may not think about and a kind of heavy talk ill-suited to casual conversation.

However, once started I kept thinking about a way to offer others some insight into what might seem a troubling but opaque topic. I had decided I could not identify a single source that would accomplish what I wanted to accomplish so I tried to identify key elements of the online environment that are involved in determining what I think is our present situation. I decided to focus on video resources.

What follows is a list of videos that explain individual components that combine to produce the challenges and complexity of our present online social world. In an effort to identify what I see as the individual components, I have designated a term or phrase and you will find that term or phrase highlighted in the following list. In many cases, I came to these topics and individuals based on individual books that I read. My bias for exploring what I consider personally important topics is to read rather than watch, but I understand others don’t consume information in this way. Most of the names identified below are also authors and be could search for more detailed presentations.

Components of the social media mess explained for those who don’t like to read

Filter bubble – what we want to see and not what we need to see – Pariser – TED talk
Surveillance capitalism – Zuboff – Triangulation
Section 230 – Wall Street Journal
Radicalization – austav Mukherjee – TED talk
Confirmation and other biases – Shepard – TED talk
Spread of misinformation – Aral – TED talk