It’s kind of amazing to me that an observation that anyone could make based on their experience as a human living on planet earth gets discounted because there isn’t some peer reviewed study from Harvard or whatever that confirms the observation. Young girls are mean to each other, that’s a fact. We don’t need an army of data scientists to “look into it”.

Maybe experience shouldn't be thrown outright, but there is a history of "obvious" stuff that falls apart under scrutiny.

Observer expectations can be really strong.

For example, does sugar make kids hyperactive? No real evidence for it (last I checked). But widely believed as fact.

> Young girls are mean to each other, that’s a fact.

In all societies across time? Or just in American High schools and on Instagram?

How is this sarcastic answer helpful? As far as I can see you have provided no useful information.

If you don’t think universities are the right people to help with this question, who would you recommend to answer it?

You said: “Young girls are mean to each other, that’s a fact.”

How do you know this fact?

> How is this sarcastic answer helpful?

It’s helpful because it’s pointing out how absurd it is to constantly demand “data” to verify rudimentary observations of human nature. For whatever reason, and maybe it’s because of tech being so data obsessed, you can make a claim on this website as benign as “look both ways before crossing the street” and inevitably someone will want to see a “peer reviewed” study that says looking both ways before crossing the street “affects the outcome variable” of not getting hit by a car.

> If you don’t think universities are the right people to help with this question, who would you recommend to answer it?

Your mother, or your sister if you have one.

>How do you know this fact?

My name is remarkEon and I went to middle and high school in the United States on a planet I call Earth.

>>> Young girls are mean to each other, that’s a fact.

>>> In all societies across time? Or just in American High schools and on Instagram?

>> How do you know this fact?

>My name is remarkEon and I went to middle and high school in the United States on a planet I call Earth.

Ok, so you think your American High school experience gives you insight into all societies across time.

Understood. Your answers make sense now. Thanks for answering.

Is your claim that only in the United States is it that girls are mean to each other when they are in primary and secondary school? This seems like a much more extreme claim than mine. You have to argue that there’s something unique about the not_the_United_States schools such that there’s something nullifying intrafemale competition.

It’s a claim so extreme that … I’d like to see some data to back it up.

> You have to argue that there’s something unique about the not_the_United_States schools such that there’s something nullifying intrafemale competition.

Why do you think this? You only have your school experience to go on. You have nothing to base this claim on.

I think it’s entirely possible that the conditions of school create much of the competition you are observing, and that US schools are more extreme than others.

School intentionally creates behaviors. There is no reason not to believe that it has side effects.

And yes, to get any insight into which of is right, we’d need someone to have studied it.

I honestly think you must be trolling at this point. You’re taking this pedantic, academic view about the behavior of children and taking it to such an extreme (US school structure and its problems explain all malevolent minor female behavior) that I can’t believe you’re arguing in good faith.

No - I’m arguing that culture and social structures influence behavior, and that you can’t generalize from what you have observed at school to other cultures and times.

There is nothing pedantic or academic or anything I have said.

> US school structure and its problems explain all malevolent minor female behavior

This is simply a lie. I never said anything that implies this extreme view.

You are arguing that malevolent minor female behavior is universal and doesn’t need to be studied.

You might turn out to be right about the former, but without studying it, it’s just your baseless prejudice.

Experience and observation are a great place to begin an investigation. Of course if you're not careful, they can incorrectly color your results. As you say, anecdotal beliefs are not necessarily facts.

That said, the error I see more commonly is that the observation is perfectly valid, (or at least roughly valid) but the explanation is poor. People believe in the explanation because they feel so strongly about the observation. This is a fallacy I see over and over again. (and is often something I've seen leveraged in scams: "You've all experienced X. Here are some emotional stories about X. Now let me tell you how I have all the answers to X.")

I've tried to make it clear that my idea is not proven, but is something that I think is reasonable, and will hopefully lead to an interesting discussion. I'm definitely not suggesting that I have access to the truth, or that my idea is fact simply because I've explained something using scientific terms.

It's a weird phenomenon that's unique to HN. I understand that the idea is to elevate online discussion here, but many do it to such an absurd degree that anything anyone says always has someone asking for a source.

I sometimes wonder how these people would have survived at parties or social gatherings before the Internet when you couldn't just whip out your phone, spend 2 minutes not talking to anyone, click on the first Google search result, and then proclaiming "um acksually..."

Facebook studied it internally and covered it up in congressional testimony. That's literally what the article is about

Agreed. SOME may behave this way, but without more info who are we to say that they "are predisposed" in general. Teenage years are very hard for tons of reasons mentioned above and the way people handle those stresses comes down to tons of factors, support systems, upbringing, context, culture, etc.

Facebook is immorally exploiting that stress.