“The methodology is not fit to provide statistical estimates for the correlation between Instagram and mental health or to evaluate causal claims between social media and health/well-being,” Facebook writes in an introduction annotation on one of the slide decks.
While on a slide that contains the striking observation that “Most wished Instagram had given them better control over what they saw”, Facebook nitpicks that the colors used by its researchers to shade the cells of the table which presents the data might have created a misleading interpretation – “Because the different color shading represents very small difference within each row”.
“Contrary to how the objectives have been framed, this research was designed to understand user perceptions and not to provide measures of prevalence, statistical estimates for the correlation between Instagram and mental health or to evaluate causal claims between Instagram and health/well-being,” Facebook writes in another reframing notation, before going on to “Clarify” that the 30% figure “Only” applied to the “Subset of survey takers who first reported experiencing an issue in the past 30 days and not all users or all teen girls”.
[Via]
