Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to. Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addicts narrative’ spending too much time indulging in a compulsive behaviour that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.

“negative wellbeing effects can result from user behaviors” and documenting four video-watching behaviors that bring about the majority of negative wellbeing effects: (1) late night use, (2) heavy habitual use, (3) unintentional use, and (4) problematic content.

despite the rules that don’t allow those under the age of 13 to be on Snapchat, our focus group clearly showed that the middle school set was a rabid – almost exclusive – user of Snapchat.

a parent asked ‘ how old were you when you started using social media.’ All of them said btwn ages 8-12 and admitted to lieing about their birthdate to get around it

compulsive usage on TikTok is rampant and our users need better tools to understand their usage, manage it effectively, and ensure being on TikTok is time well spent

Some of Twitter’s struggles predate Musk. The company had been hemorrhaging celebrities and high-profile figures in entertainment and media for years as they moved to more visual-focused platforms, and it has long faced difficulties retaining younger users.

Twitter’s biggest struggle is that it’s an arcane follow-based social network, meaning users must manually seek out other users to follow to receive content, and if a user has no followers, it’s very hard to be heard. Contrast that with an app like TikTok, which delivers content through a highly sophisticated algorithmic feed. This means that even a user with zero followers on TikTok can reach millions with their first video.

Home feed promotes rightwing tweets over those from the left, internal research finds

Parler is co-founded by Rebekah Mercer, as a bastion of free spech from the tyranny of the leftist big tech