Facebook will try to 'nudge' teens away from harmful content

WASHINGTON - A Facebook Inc executive said Sunday that the company would introduce new measures on its apps to prompt teens away from harmful content, as US lawmakers scrutinize how Facebook and subsidiaries like Instagram affect young people's mental health.

Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, also expressed openness to the idea of letting regulators have access to Facebook algorithms that are used to amplify content. But Clegg said he could not answer the question whether its algorithms amplified the voices of people who had attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

The algorithms "should be held to account, if necessary, by regulation so that people can match what our systems say they’re supposed to do from what actually happens," Clegg told CNN's "State of the Union."

He spoke days after former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen testified on Capitol Hill about how the company entices users to keep scrolling, harming teens' well-being.

"We're going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that the teenager is looking at the same content over and over again and it's content which may not be conducive to their well-being, we will nudge them to look at other content," Clegg told CNN.

In addition, "we're introducing something called, 'take a break,' where we will be prompting teens to just simply just take a break from using Instagram," Clegg said.

US senators last week grilled Facebook on its plans to better protect young users on its apps, drawing on leaked internal research that showed the social media giant was aware of how its Instagram app damaged the mental health of youth.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, has argued for more regulation against technology companies like Facebook.

"I'm just tired of hearing 'trust us', and it's time to protect those moms and dads that have been struggling with their kids getting addicted to the platform and been exposed to all kinds of bad stuff," Klobuchar told CNN on Sunday after Clegg's interview.

She said the United States needs a new privacy policy so that people can "opt in" if they favor allowing their online data to be shared. The United States also should update children's privacy laws and its competition policy, and require tech companies to make their algorithms more transparent, Klobuchar said.

Clegg noted that Facebook had recently put on hold its plans for developing Instagram Kids, aimed at pre-teens, and was introducing new optional controls for adults to supervise teens.

-reuters-

Facebook whistleblower reveals identity ahead of US Senate hearing

A former Facebook Inc employee revealed herself on Sunday as the whistleblower who leaked a trove of internal company research that served as the basis of a Wall Street Journal investigative series.

The leak led to a Senate hearing and a new wave of criticism over the negative impact of the social media giant's apps.

Frances Haugen appeared on Sunday on the television program "60 Minutes." She will testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday in a hearing titled "Protecting Kids Online," about the company's research into Instagram's effect on the mental health of young users.

Last week, a Facebook executive testified to US senators and disputed the Journal's characterization of the research, pointing out other findings that she said showed the app's positive impact on teens.

Haugen was a product manager at Facebook for more than two years, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also worked as a product manager at Google, Pinterest and Yelp.

Haugen said she'd seen problems at other social media companies, but "it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I'd seen before." 

-reuters-

Fear of the unknown: Locked-down athletes face mental health challenge

MELBOURNE - When Olympic swimming champion Kyle Chalmers completed what he knew would be his final training session before the coronavirus shutdown, his overwhelming feelings were of sadness and the fear of what was to come.

Fear does not come easily to the strapping 21-year-old Australian, who has endured two heart operations since winning the 100 metres freestyle title in Rio and raises crocodiles and pythons for a hobby.

While it took some "processing" to digest the fact that his dream of defending his Olympic title in Tokyo had been shifted back 12 months, it was the prospect of not setting foot in a swimming pool for half a year that really had him rattled.

"That was my hugest fear, not being able to do what I love which is swimming, and if I couldn't do that for six months, I was getting pretty edgy about it," Chalmers told Reuters by phone from South Australia.

"I love training and I love exercising. I think I love training more than I love racing."

Chalmers is one of thousands of athletes whose dreams have been put on hold following the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, while thousands more around the world are in lockdown with their sporting careers shelved indefinitely.

"Unknowns are quite challenging, especially for athletes whose days are mapped out from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep," Chalmers added.

"And that's everybody's fear, and especially mine, getting out of that structured routine and just trying to work out what to do with that free time now."

SHOCK PHASE

Health experts warn that a prolonged isolation could take a big mental toll on people whose livelihoods and self esteem are intrinsically linked to competition.

"A lot of athletes are still in an initial shock phase, probably confused and also with some relief after all the chaos," Caroline Anderson, a psychologist who works with professional and Olympic athletes in Australia, told Reuters.

"Probably their two main coping strategies in life are having that competitive edge and being able to really push themselves physically for six-seven hours a day. They haven’t got that anymore which is very difficult."

Chalmers has taken to yoga, hiking and an exercise bike to keep in shape mentally and physically while he awaits the arrival of a loaned swimming pool housed in a shipping container for his back yard.

Former Olympic butterfly champion Chad le Clos is trying to make the best of the situation by tethering himself to a bungee cord as he swims in his own small backyard pool in Cape Town.

"It is not ideal, but you have to be creative given the limitations you have," the South African told Reuters.

"That will help to keep me going."

The top athletes possess exceptional drive, talent and the ability to perform under relentless pressure but they are no less vulnerable to mental health problems.

Many have spoken openly of their battles with depression and their recoveries from nervous breakdowns. Others carry their burdens quietly. A slew have committed suicide in recent years.

Self-isolation raises the threat of acute psychological events, and not just for athletes with pre-existing conditions, psychologist Anderson said.

"That sudden stopping of the sport, from a physiological or biological standpoint, there’s a reduction in endorphins but also (a loss of) identity," she said.

"They see themselves as athletes and sport is very tied up in that. Without the sport, the inability to train, these are absolutely risk factors."

'WIGGING OUT'

Many athletes are putting a brave face on the lockdown, converting garages and bedrooms into home gymnasiums and posting cheerful videos of themselves on social media keeping fit by "bench-pressing" their children.

Tennis great Roger Federer cheered fans with a video of himself practising trick-shots against an outdoor wall as it snowed at his Switzerland home.

American middle distance runner Emma Coburn, who took bronze in the 3,000-metre steeplechase at Rio, told Reuters: "I'm not feeling stress or anxiety about it. I enjoy in general being at home."

But the weeks and months of the lockdown will be a time when mental health experts on the payroll of teams and federations earn their keep as they try to plot a path for athletes in what is effectively uncharted territory.

Frustration at the confinement has already spilled over on occasion, with high profile soccer players getting into hot water for breaching government orders on social distancing by hosting parties and drinking sessions.

Such incidents usually occur as celebrations after competition, said Gearoid Towey, the founder of Crossing the Line, a charity focusing on the wellbeing of athletes.

"I think this is slightly different. There isn’t anything, per se, to celebrate. People are locked up in their houses," he said.

"You're probably going to get some incidents but with all the mental health resources in place, sports will generally know which athletes might be prone to 'wigging out'.

"You'd like to think they’d have extra support for them."

(Reporting by Ian Ransom, Nick Mulvenney in Sydney, Amy Tennery in New York and Nick Said in Cape Town. Writing by Ian Ransom and Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)

-Reuters-

Mental health at risk as California wildfire threat grows

PARADISE, California - Tasha Ritza lost her house, her job and her hometown on the day a wildfire destroyed Paradise, California. A year later, her life is still in tatters, she said.

"I'm at a loss. I deal with a lot of anxiety. I can't figure out if I want to stay, if I want to go," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "I haven't worked in a year.

"In a day it was all taken from me, and it's not getting any easier," said Ritza, who ran a kitchen in one of the Paradise public schools before the fire. She has moved to nearby Chico while she struggles to decide what to do next.

In California communities haunted by wildfires losses and new fire threats, the damage has not been only physical. Anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges linked to the fires are growing - and residents say they fear more trauma is ahead.

"This whole county has PTSD, depression," said Michele Evans, a young mother who worked at a dance studio in Paradise before the fire, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Everybody could use some counseling, the whole county," she added.

The wildfire that swept through the northern California town of Paradise in November 2018 was the most deadly in state history, killing 85 people.

Panicked residents fled burning homes and abandoned their cars on blocked streets, running through flames down the main roadway to escape their mountain town, once popular with retirees.

Today only about 10% of the 27,000 people who once lived there remain.

Some moved just up the road to the small mountain community of Magalia and others to bigger cities nearby such as Chico and Sacramento. But many left the area altogether after the fire destroyed almost 18,800 structures, more than half of them homes.

In the charred remains of Paradise, a few people still live in trailers on the burned-out lots where their homes once stood.

California has long suffered seasonal wildfires, but longer dry seasons and more powerful winds - which scientists link to climate change - are helping make the blazes far more destructive, raising risks - and fears.

ANXIETY, DEPRESSION

Rebecca Schmidt, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, has studied mental health among pregnant women during wildfires ever since 2017 blazes tore through the state's Napa and Sonoma wine regions.

"The most commonly reported symptom even a year later was stress and anxiety," she said. That included sleeplessness, headaches, difficulty concentrating and depression.

"It's even more worrisome when communities are disrupted, like Paradise. A lot of them lost their support system," she said.

The losses can have long-standing mental health impacts - and fear of more fires also is taking a toll, Schmidt said.

"The feeling of not being safe affects the mental health of people all around, and it's a long-term thing," she said.

In Sonoma County, where the Kincade fire burned nearly 80,000 acres (32,400 hectares) before being extinguished this month, officials are considering asking residents to vote on a 1/4 cent sales tax to fund mental health services.

County officials there also recently declared a climate emergency in an effort to make climate risks a top priority in policies and decision-making.

"I've seen more mental illness in the last two years than I've ever seen in Sonoma County before," said Kellee Ziegler, an emergency room nurse at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

During the Kincade blaze, people filled the emergency room with complaints of PTSD and suicide attempts, she said.

"This fire threw people over the edge," she said.

Dr. Grant Brenner, a New York-based psychiatrist and expert in disaster-related mental health, said mental health threats from disasters tend to be overlooked.

But as global warming brings growing threats - from stronger hurricanes and more frequent floods and droughts to larger fire risks, "the damage psychologically from climate change is going to be massive," he said.

One way to ease the pressure is letting survivors help other survivors, said Janet Leisen, whose home in the northern California city of Santa Rosa burned two years ago.

She and other Santa Rosa residents who lost homes in the 2017 blaze traveled to Healdsburg during the Kincade fire to offer advice and support on recovering and rebuilding, working from a local assistance center set up for newly affected residents.

"As a victim, we know that it's difficult to talk to people who haven't been there," she said. "It's easier to talk to someone who understands that it's not just stuff (lost), that this is a traumatic event."

Jessie Mercer, an art therapist who lived in Paradise, said she poured her grief into creating a "Phoenix" sculpture, built from the keys of homes lost in the blaze.

The sculpture was unveiled as residents returned to Paradise this month to mark the fire's one-year anniversary.

"I brought us home, even if just for today," Mercer said at the unveiling.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Gingers Unite: Ed Sheeran and Prince Harry promote mental health

LONDON (Reuters) - The doorbell rings to the tune of the British national anthem “God Save the Queen”, and Prince Harry opens the door to find Ed Sheeran on the threshold. Both men have red hair and beards.

“It’s like looking in the mirror,” the prince quips before ushering the pop star inside.

This is the opening scene of a video released on Thursday in which Queen Elizabeth’s grandson and the Grammy-winning musician join forces to campaign on an issue both care about deeply.

The clip, posted on Harry’s Instagram page, shows the pair sitting at a table talking about their joint passion, but after a short while it becomes clear there is a misunderstanding.

“This for me is a subject and a conversation that is just not talked about enough. I think people all over the world are really suffering,” Harry says.

Sheeran responds that he has been trying to write a song about the issue to help raise awareness. He then adds: “People just don’t understand what it’s like for people like us.”

Looking confused, Harry asks: “What?” So Sheeran elaborates: “You know, the jokes and snide comments, I just feel like it’s time that we stood up and said, you know, we’re not going to take this any more. We are ginger and we’re going to fight.”

Apparently embarrassed, Harry says: “OK. Slightly awkward,” before going on to explain that he was not talking about discrimination against people with red hair, but rather about World Mental Health Day.

Hastily deleting the words “GINGERS UNITE” from a document on his laptop, Sheeran quickly gets on-message and the video closes with the pair urging people to reach out to anyone who may be suffering from mental health problems.

Harry, sixth-in-line to the British throne, has long campaigned on the issue. On Thursday, he was in Nottingham, central England, visiting community projects aimed at preventing mental health problems and violence among young people.

Harry and his wife Meghan, whose official titles are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have increasingly used the Internet to engage directly with the public. Both have launched legal action against British media outlets over coverage they deem intrusive and inaccurate.

Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison

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Google Glass lives on as learning aid for autistic children

SAN FRANCISCO — When Esaïe Prickett sat down in the living room with his mother, father and four older brothers, he was the only one wearing Google Glass.

As Esaïe, who was 10 at the time and is 12 now, gazed through the computerized glasses, his family made faces — happy, sad, surprised, angry, bored — and he tried to identify each emotion. In an instant, the glasses told him whether he was right or wrong, flashing tiny digital icons that only he could see.

Esaïe was 6 when he and his family learned he had autism. The technology he was using while sitting in the living room was meant to help him learn how to recognize emotions and make eye contact with those around him. The glasses would verify his choices only if he looked directly at a face.

He and his family tested the technology for several weeks as part of a clinical trial run by researchers at Stanford University in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently detailed in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics, the trial fits into a growing effort to build new technologies for children on the autism spectrum, including interactive robots and computerized eyewear.

The Stanford study’s results show that the methods have promise and indicate that they could help children like Esaïe understand emotions and engage in more direct ways with those around them. They could also measure changes in behavior, something that has historically been difficult to do.

Experts believe that other new technologies may help in similar ways. Talking digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, for example, could help children who misuse their pronouns. But even as these ideas spread, researchers warn that they will require rigorous testing before their effects are completely understood.

Catalin Voss started building software for Google Glass in 2013, not long after Google unveiled the computerized eyewear amid much hullabaloo from the national media. An 18-year-old Stanford freshman at the time, Voss began building an application that could automatically recognize images. Then he thought of his cousin, who had autism.

Growing up, Voss’ cousin practiced recognizing facial expressions while looking into a bathroom mirror. Google Glass, Voss thought, might improve on this common exercise. Drawing on the latest advances in computer vision, his software could automatically read facial expressions and keep close track of when someone recognized an emotion and when they did not.

“I was trying to build software that could recognize faces,” Voss said. “And I knew that there were people who struggled with that.”

At the time, the brief moment Google Glass spent in the national spotlight was already coming to an end. Google stopped selling the device to consumers amid concerns that its built-in camera would compromise personal privacy.

But Google Glass lived on as something to be used by researchers and businesses, and Voss, now a doctoral student, spent the next several years developing his application with Dennis Wall, a Stanford professor who specializes in autism research, and others at the university.

Their clinical trial, conducted over two years with 71 children, is one of the first of its kind. It spanned everything from severe forms of autism, including children with speech impairments and tactile sensitivities, to much milder forms. Children who used the software in their homes showed a significant gain on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, a standard tool for tracking the behavior of those on the autism spectrum, Voss said.

The gain was in line with improvements by children who received therapy in dedicated clinics through more traditional methods. The hope is that Voss’ application and similar methods can help more children in more places, without regular visits to clinics.

“It is a way for families to, on some level, provide their own therapy,” Voss said.

Jeffrey Prickett, Esaïe’s father, said he had been drawn to the study because he had known it would appeal to his son, who enjoys using iPad apps and watching movies.

“He does fine interacting with people,” Prickett said. “But he does better interacting with technology.”

Prickett found it hard to judge whether the Google device helped his son recognize emotions, but he saw a marked improvement in Esaïe’s ability to make eye contact.

Heather Crowhurst, who lives near Sacramento, California, said she had experienced something similar with her 8-year-old son, Thomas, who also participated in the trial. But Thomas was not entirely captivated with the digital therapy. “It was kind of boring,” he said.

The concern with such studies is that they rely on the observations of parents who are helping their children use the technology, said Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of autism. The parents are aware of the technological intervention, so their observations may not be reliable.

Still, the Stanford team considers its study a first step toward wider use of this and other technologies in autism. It has licensed the technology to Cognoa, a Silicon Valley startup founded by Wall. The company hopes to commercialize the method once it receives approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the use of medical devices in the United States. That may still be years away.

Other companies are taking a different approach. Brain Power, a startup in Massachusetts that has built similar software for Google Glass, is selling its technology to local schools. The company considers it a teaching tool, not a medical device.

Patrick Daly, assistant superintendent of the school district in North Reading, Massachusetts, is testing Brain Power’s technology after watching its effect on his 9-year-old son, who is on the spectrum. The district intends to test the technology over the next few years.

Previously, the district tried to teach similar skills through iPad computer tablets. Daly sees Google Glass as a big improvement.

“It can actually maintain eye contact,” he said. “They are not looking down while they try to learn an emotion.”

Robokind, a startup in Dallas, applies the same philosophy to different hardware. The company spent the past several years designing a robot that attempts to teach many of the same skills as technologies built for digital eyewear. Called Milo, the doll-like, 2-foot-tall robot mimics basic emotions and tries to make eye contact with students. It also asks questions and tries to engage students in simple conversations.

Robokind has sold hundreds of the robots to schools for testing. Each one costs $12,000, plus more than $3,500 for additional software.

In some ways, such a device is a poor substitute for real human interaction. But the strength of this and other technologies is that they can repeat tasks time and again, without getting tired or bored or angry. They can also measure behavior in precise ways, said Pam Feliciano, scientific director of the nonprofit Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research.

For these reasons, Feliciano also sees promise in Amazon’s Alexa. Her 14-year-old son is on the spectrum and struggles with his pronouns. He sometimes calls himself “you,” not “I.”

Her task is to correct him each time he makes a mistake. But she’s human and gets tired. She does not always remember. A device like Alexa could help, she said, provided that researchers can show it is reliable and effective.

“The technologies are there,” she said. “It is just a matter of the right technologists working with the right clinicians.”


2019 New York Times News Service

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Instagram tightens rules on self-injury images

SAN FRANCISCO- Instagram said late Thursday it was clamping down on images related to self-injury such as cutting.

The move came after British Health Secretary Matt Hancock met with social media companies about doing more to safeguard the mental health of teenagers using their platforms.

British teenager Molly Russell was found dead in her bedroom in 2017. The 14-year-old had apparently taken her own life, and her Instagram account reportedly revealed she followed accounts related to depression and suicide.

"It is encouraging to see that decisive steps are now being taken to try to protect children from disturbing content on Instagram," said the girl's father, Ian Russell.

"It is now time for other social media platforms to take action to recognize the responsibility they too have to their users if the internet is to become a safe place for young and vulnerable people."

Changes to Instagram's self-harm content rules follow a comprehensive review involving experts and academics from around the world on youth, mental health, and suicide, according to chief executive Adam Mosseri.

DOWNPLAYING SELF DAMAGE

"Over the past month, we have seen that we are not where we need to be on self-harm and suicide, and that we need to do more to keep the most vulnerable people who use Instagram safe," Mosseri said in an online post.

"We will not allow any graphic images of self-harm, such as cutting on Instagram – even if it would previously have been allowed as admission."

Instagram has never allowed posts that promote or encourage suicide or self-harm.

The Facebook-owned service is removing references to non-graphic content related to people hurting themselves, such as healed scars, from search, hashtag, explore, or recommendation features.

"We are not removing this type of content from Instagram entirely, as we don't want to stigmatize or isolate people who may be in distress and posting self-harm related content as a cry for help," Mosseri said.

Instagram also planned to ramp up efforts to get counseling or other resources to people who post or search for self-harm related content.

"During the comprehensive reviews, the experts, including the Centre for Mental Health and Save.org reaffirmed that creating safe spaces for young people to talk about their experiences -- including self-harm -- online, is essential," Mosseri said.

"However, collectively it was advised that graphic images of self-harm -- even when it is someone admitting their struggles -- has the potential to unintentionally promote self-harm," he continued, citing it as the reason for the ban.

Instagram's aim is to eliminate graphic self-injury or suicide-related imagery and significantly downplay related content in features at the service while remaining a supportive community, according to Mosseri.

On Thursday, Mosseri joined representatives from Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter and other companies who met with Hancock to discuss the handling of content related to self-injury or suicide.

"What really matters is when children are on these sites they are safe. The progress we made today is good, but there's a lot more work to do," Hancock said after the meeting.

"What all the companies that I met today committed to was that they want to solve this problem, and they want to work with us about it."

Editor's note:

A group in the Philippines is dedicated to addressing those who have suicidal tendencies.

The crisis hotlines of the Natasha Goulbourn Foundation aim to make these individuals feel that someone is ready to listen to them.

These are their hotline numbers:

(02) 804-HOPE (4673)
0917 558 HOPE (4673)
2919 (toll-free number for all GLOBE and TM subscribers)

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