Media Outlets Begin Amplifying Social Media Misinformation

Following the UNESCO report being published, several outlets began pushing misinformation about social media as being inherently harmful.

Recently, we caught wind of a UNESCO report on social media. For us, there were a number of red flags with the summaries, so we did some further digging and did actual fact-checking. It turned out, the UNESCO report suffered from confirmation bias. Specifically, the authors approached the topic of social media by assuming that it is terrible for people’s health. From there, the authors cherry-picked data that confirmed their initial beliefs of social media and did whatever they could to ignore any evidence that contradicted their own personal beliefs about social media.

The end result? We got a report making bold claims about how social media is poisoning the minds of young girls and teenagers and is an overall threat to society. This despite the evidence either saying otherwise or heavily flawed research material that should’ve been thrown out immediately as unreliable being used prominently. Towards the end of my report, I feared that this report would be taken unquestionably by media companies who have been trying to push similar unfounded claims that social media is a massive threat to society.

Sure enough, right on cue, we are seeing multiple reports regurgitating the fearmongering pushed by the UNESCO report. The CBC published an article entitled “Social media hurts girls’ mental health and education potential, says UNESCO report”. The report showcased a reporter who didn’t bother to do any fact-checking on the report and took the findings at face value. Here’s an example:

Social media was noted as an area of concern. Some findings include:

• Social media algorithms can magnify negative gender norms and practices, thus impacting students’ wellbeing.
• The wellbeing of girls, who tend to spend more time on social media, is under more strain than boys.
• Social media users reported more body-related image concerns than non-users.
• The addictive design of some platforms can lead to excessive screen time and distract students from academics and extracurricular activities, and may also affect attention spans and learning habits.

(emphasis mine)

The problem with this excerpt? That’s not what the research that was used in the report said. The UNESCO report stated this:

The UNESCO report cites Facebook’s own research, which found that 32% of teenage girls said that, when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. It also underlines the addictive design of TikTok, characterized by short, engaging videos. This instant-gratification model may affect attention spans and learning habits, making sustained concentration on educational and extracurricular tasks more challenging.

Yet, when you go to the actual research that was produced by Facebook. The number was taken from 2021 where Facebook pointed out that the Wall Street Journal, at the time, took that number completely out of context. In response, Facebook released the entire slide in question which painted a VERY different picture on how people feel when using social media. For convenience, here’s the slide in question:

Here’s what I said when finding out that the statistic was actually cherry-picked:

Did the report offer the full details of where this number came from? No. Did the report also mention that 45.5% of teen girls said that the platforms had no impact on their body image? No. Did the report mention that these platforms led to 22% of teen girls feeling better about their body? No. Did the report mention that 42% of teen girls felt better about themselves on the subject of social comparison? No. Did the report mention that 51% of teen girls felt less lonely thanks to using social media? No. Did the report mention that nearly 60% of teen girls felt that social media made no difference on the subject of eating disorders? No. What about 57% of teen girls feeling better about their issues with sadness thanks to those platforms? No.

Naturally, the CBC didn’t look at that number and wonder what the full context of that number was. The reporter simply looked at the number, took it at face value, and just presumed that it proved that social media is terrible for people’s mental health and regurgitated that without question. The reason that the number stuck out to us was because there has been plenty of research that concludes that social media use doesn’t inherently lead to anxiety, depression, and other societal ills. Had the UNESCO report reliably found otherwise, it would have been quite the anomaly in the research in this area. Yet, the UNESCO report didn’t even reliably find that, but instead, relied on massaging the statistics to get a result the authors were seeking.

Of course, the CBC wasn’t the only outlet that pushed anti-social media misinformation. Other outlets also pushed those talking points without question. One example comes from Women’s Agenda which also said this:

According to research from Facebook cited in the report, 32 per cent of teenage girls said when they have negative thoughts about their body image, Instagram makes them feel worse.

Again, the 32%, as we pointed out above, was completely taken out of context. What’s more, the comment that “Instagram makes them feel worse” cited no reference material that showed otherwise. In other words, that comment was simply plucked out of thin air.

That report also pushed this:

UNESCO’s report also looks at the design of platforms such as Instagram and TikTok that produce algorithm-driven, image-based and instant-gratification content for users. This can expose girls to material that glorifies unhealthy behvaiours and unrealistic body standards, which affects their mental health, well-being and ultimately their education.

The problem? The research this was based on was heavily flawed. The research this was based off of said this:

For our study, Center for Countering Digital Hate researchers set up new accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia at the minimum age TikTok allows, 13 years old. These accounts paused briefly on videos about body image and mental health, and liked them. What we found was deeply disturbing. Within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content. Within 8 minutes, TikTok served content related to eating disorders. Every 39 seconds, TikTok recommended videos about body image and mental health to teens.

The results are every parent’s nightmare: young people’s feeds are bombarded with harmful, harrowing content that can have a significant cumulative impact on their understanding of the world around them, and their physical and mental health.

(emphasis mine)

In other words, the researchers were literally training the algorithms of TikTok to send them content related to body image and mental health. Then, after all that effort, the researchers finally got the result they were after and said that TikTok delivers that content at alarming rate. They didn’t even bother putting into context whether or not that content was harmful or not, just that the algorithms they trained for their accounts sent them that content and declared it all to be bad. This is far removed from what your average account would normally get. Ultimately, these results should’ve been thrown out before being published, yet the UNESCO report, similarly, was after a result and published the findings at face value because, again, it was the result of confirmation bias. Now, we see media outlets regurgitating those findings without question on top of it all.

Some outlets were going even further than even the UNESCO reports findings. For instance, RTTNews published this:

Exposure to social media presents high risks of privacy invasion, cyberbullying and distraction from learning to young girls, according to a new report by UNESCO.

The problem? Even the UNESCO report didn’t go that far. The UNESCO report said that there might be increased exposure to cyberbullying, not that there was “high risks” to cyberbullying, among other things.

Another report from the Manila Times also made this very same mistake:

Digital technologies and algorithm-driven software – especially social media – present high risks of privacy invasion, cyberbullying and distraction from learning to young girls, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) latest Global Education Monitor (GEM) report released on Thursday.

Again, the UNESCO report didn’t say that social media presents a “high risk”, but rather, an “increased risk” (and even then, some of those findings are questionable.

All of the above is just sloppy journalism all around. There’s a contingent of reporters who want to push the narrative that social media is inherently terrible for society and will jump at any chance to paint social media in the worst possible light at every turn. Some may have thought that they got a smoking gun here, but it ultimately was just another dud.

Sadly, though, facts matter little these days and there will be users who want to hear comments about how social media is destroying your mind. Anything that aligns with their personal belief will be taken as further proof of this belief – no matter how flawed the underlying research may be.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.