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Comment by ckdarby | Hacker News Reader

Instagram. It is that simple, instagram is straight up cancer, well, actually most social networks but the current major cancer is Instagram.

My GF is glued to her phone. The amount of circle jerking that happens with women and social media is utterly crazy. Bring this up as the article mentions it seems to be higher in women and when I looked around in day to day life I see more women glued to instagram than men (Don't have stats to back it up).

I wouldn't be surprised if they found a link between this and users who use social networks more as well.

Edit: Maybe "circle jerk" wasn't the right phrase to use...

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> The amount of circle jerking that happens with women and social media is utterly crazy

Men have been describing women's social interaction in this way, varying only by the names of the popular media and mode of communication of the day, for about as long as we have documentary evidence of how men described anything (and presumably longer, though of course that cannot be documented.)

What's your point?

That men have a distinct gendered nature that makes them wrongly describe women this way?

Or that women have a distinct gendered nature that makes them engage in such social interaction styles - and men have been noticing it for a long time?

I'm also curious what historical comparisons you're talking about... it's not immediately clear what the 500 BC equivalent of IG social media addiction was.

Gossiping around the water well, as we men would probably describe it. In reality I think it's more likely they're assuring better social cohesion by establishing secondary communication for us more emotionally sensitive masculine types.

If that social cohesion advantage transfers well to Instagram is an important question of course. I would not dismiss it out of hand.

Interesting. You agree, then, that women gossip more than men. But you think gossip - which means talking about people behind their backs - is good for social cohesion?

This really sounds like a complete inversion of reality. Straightforward communication is good; manipulating information, denying information, etc are bad. Lots of girls (and some boys) even commit suicide because of gossip campaigns against them - and nowadays it's frequently mediated by social media.

I've been targeted by a female gossip campaign in my youth. The lies flowed freely and harmed me tremendously, always whispered behind my back so I couldn't correct the record. In contrast, when boys had a problem with me they threatened physically instead. Many have experienced this dichotomy.

It's hard to see how one could come to your conclusion from a purely fact-finding mindset. But I'd be interested in any observations that led you to this conclusion. At this point, I think there's a good chance that you feel you're morally compelled to believe this regardless of evidence, as part of a political/moralistic project to change the world according to some grand narrative.

Anyway it's testable. We can just consider: Do groups composed of all men have better or worse social cohesion than comparable groups composed of all women?

I've heard from people who worked in offices of different gender mixes that there is a difference... and it doesn't support your theory. But there must be some better evidence, somewhere.

There is a part in sapiens about the utility of gossip for the evolution of mankind if I am not mistaken.

I believe in the end it stated the result / ability to do so was good for social interaction. (Arguably not for those outside the group?).

Anyway, I can not recall exactly so I am going to refrain from adding more to it.

I said men would describe it as gossip, I didn't say I would agree to that characterisation. Gossip is "idle talk or rumor", which I think is a bad thing. But talking about people behind their backs is not necessarily a bad thing. Indirect communication (which I think is a nicer way to talk about it than 'gossip') allows people to more directly address problems because it circumvents ego. That is why I feel it might contribute to social cohesion, as long as everyone has pure intentions.

The second aspect is of course the question of pure intentions, obviously often competition or spite causes people to gossip in malicious ways, and this might negatively affect social cohesion, or at least exclude individuals.

I don't think the effects are very testable in modern society, as a society consisting of only men or women can not persist for more than one generation.

I think your dichotomy of women using emotional manipulation, and men using physical manipulation to oppress/compete are analogous in their evolutionary role. Some people think that means the role is to exclude the weak, but I think that's just an unfortunate side effect, and the role is more to ensure the strong exist at all. Unfortunately often nature cruelly ignores that sort of collateral damage.

I see more women glued to instagram than men

There is certainly some evidence that women and men use social media differently; Pinterest is 81% women for example, and only 7% of posts are by men. Instagram is 68% women. I don't know of any social media that is male-dominated in the same extent. LinkedIn is 56% men, Twitter 57%.

i wonder what the HN demographic looks like?

it's probably hard to measure since one does not provide gender in a profile here, but it'd still be interesting to see. I for one have a heavy HN addiction, similar to what others describe their IG addiction to be like

It is addictive. But atleast they have the maxvisit, minaway, delay settings available to provide some minimal way to reduce the pull.

Social networks need to have such tooling, that should automatically nudge people to take it easy when heavy usage is detected.

> I don't know of any social media that is male-dominated in the same extent.

Reddit, most likely HN too.

Reddit, most likely HN too.

That would be stretching my personal definition of social media, but yes Reddit does publish figures showing it's pretty much exactly as skewed towards men as Instagram is towards women, very interesting. I wonder about Strava, there seems to be no data available on that, maybe because it isn't ad-supported.

The reason I'm not so sure as neither Reddit nor HN are oriented around the personal profile in the same way as the others are. HN could (probably should) go completely "anonymous coward" and it would be no less useful.

How does Reddit know?

They use the marketing companies that use 3rd party cookies to track you on every site you visit.

So it's "you self-reported you were [fe]male on some other site; you didn't block scripts; ergo you're [fe]male".

Actually this https://www.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/ lists a few sources. The primary one appears to be Pew Research, the methodology is interesting http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-methodology/.

They random dialled, then surveyed 6000 people, ~4500 agreed to be surveyed further (with cash incentive), of those ~300 are Reddit users and the stats are taken from there. You can choose to do the survey by web or regular mail .. respondents who agree to be surveyed by mail actually take the survey at a level of 20%; if I read correctly they assume none of those sent the mail survey are net users.

The point of the survey was analysing political activity.

It seems likely to give only broad indications at best. Unfortunately this result from < 300 USAmericans seems to be repeated as "this is the global demographic of Reddit" in a few places.

Historically, surveys on HN actually put membership here as high as 98% male.

There was evidence that was an exaggeration and it has likely improved, though I haven't seen a survey recently. But, yes, HN is very male dominated.

Link? Any that have made an attempt to corroborate the findings?

Not a survey per se, but the only thing I can readily find:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5074151

I privately kept data for a time. Some of that data was lost at some point. I very carefully published some of my data on a previous blog that I recently took offline.

This is from memory. This handle is less than a year old, but I've been here over 9 years. Back in the day, members sometimes posted surveys casually. I saw several of them over time.

Edit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4041382

That 'edit' survey of n=3 -- under some notion of average, the average HNer is a non-binary transgender 30yo.

It was posted because it has a link to an actual poll so you can see what one looks like if you want to try to search the site yourself. I've searched. I did so when I answered the question. I've done so on other occasions. I can't find the polls I remember seeing. I don't know what I am doing wrong.

It also has a blurb by me from several years ago:

According to previous polls, most people here are male and in their 20's or 30's.

So that's fresher testimony that corresponds to my current recollection.

That's the best I can do. I wish I could find the data I remember seeing. I can't. I've repeatedly tried, to no avail.

Perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut henceforth rather than commenting that "I've been here 9+ years. There have been polls in the past. This is what I remember."

Because it consistently feels like it gets me nothing but push back rather than being some kind of meaningful, useful contribution to the conversation indicating that someone who has paid an excess of attention to such data over the years to try to sort their own relationship to the site has concluded that, yea, verily, your impression that there sure are a lot of men here seems accurate to me.

HN is a tiny fraction of the social media landscape.

github

Pinterest should not be considered social. Most users have collections they use for themselves, but in my experience actual social interaction is incredibly rare. I think it’s better to view as having an excellent sharing platform that not all users take advantage of.

In my experience most men are just unaware or uninterested in fashion, design, cooking, and all the things that Pinterest excels at. Personally I love it.... but again, would not consider it a social media platform in the least. Even when I build boards with people, we discuss on a separate place (phone, chat, etc)

Here is one way WhatsApp efffects mothers - https://scroll.in/magazine/834036/indian-schools-are-using-w...

When the thinking is do whatever it takes to scale, the unintended effects are too numerous for people to comprehend.

Women seem uniquely vulnerable to this thing somehow. With only a few exceptions, all of the women under 45 that I know basically can't tear themselves away from IG. This is true across IQ and socioeconomic bands in my own anecdotal experience.

Care to consider there may be some selection bias here?

It's certainly a possibility. Have you noticed a different pattern?

All the women and men in my life manage to quarantine their phone use to their personal time.

I have a tough time imagining you spending time with a friend where they just ignore you to spend time on IG. If they do, that’s likely a reflection of you.

Sure, when people are actively spending time with me they're usually not on their phone. But you have no awareness of how people you know spend the rest of their time? I'm around my friends during lots of times where we're not actively spending time together.

> that’s likely a reflection of you

Be wary of taking this statement too seriously.

0) It wouldn’t be a direct reflection of you in any case; It might directly reflect what someone thinks of you. But just because a person thinks you are boring (or creepy or lazy or crazy) does not in fact mean you are. Its just a data point.

1) Spinning in your head about whether someone thinks you are a boring person isn’t going to help you or them. Talk to a friend and ask them for direct feedback.

2) Sometimes people do have a habit of getting on their phones and then later regretting not be being present and social. I know I do and I need to make deliberate effort to avoid it (Freedom.app is useful here)

3) Sometimes people are tired.

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