Instagram Is Bad for Our Kids, Especially Girls, According to Facebook
“ Instagram is harmful to teens, especially girls” according to – not a
group of apprehensive “old
fashioned” parents – but internal research that remained secret until a few
months ago, conducted
by Facebook, Instagram’s owner . Until a former employee, a software
engineer in charge of data
analysis, brought to light the data collected in about two years of
investigations between the United
States and other countries, including Europe.
What the Research Shows
The company carried out this study to better understand the younger
generation’s use of Instagram
and to detect how – and if – it affects its youngest users’ health. A clear
picture of the situation
emerges from the results, published by
The Wall Street Journal
on September 14, 2021: Instagram
worsens problems related to the perception of one’s physical appearance
(such as eating disorders),
for 1/3 of teenagers. The study also shows that teenagers blame Instagram
for worsened symptoms
of anxiety and depression. Exposure to images that glorify perfect, toned,
highly-groomed bodies,
which receive thousands of positive comments – and, conversely, the
negative remarks you might
receive for going against norms and beauty stereotypes spread by
influencers – would cause
significant problems emotionally and psychologically for youth, who
increasingly use the social
network. Among the girls who said they had had suicidal thoughts –
including 6% of young
Americans and 13% of those in England – traced them back to Instagram.
Reactions to the Research
Frances Haugen, a former company manager who initially preferred anonymity
and later revealed
her identity during CBS News broadcast, spread the research. Later on, a US
Congress
subcommittee on online security, which is handling the case, has also
received her.
In short, the issue has stirred many reactions, and has become, in the
U.S., a political issue… while
around the world, it has re-sparked the awareness of how damaging social
media exposure can be to
its youngest users.
Internal Facebook documents released by Haugen revealed that the social
media giant was aware of
the dangers and did little to address the problems, nor did it attempt to
limit its harmful impact.
According to Haugen’s report, the documents have also shown how the
networks optimize their
algorithms and “push” polarizing content, something that was purposefully
done during the most
recent U.S. presidential election. Facebook’s practices aimed at increasing
their wealth likely
contribute to the growth in the use of electronics. Furthermore, the
company has double standards
for the “digital powerhouses” and ordinary users evidenced by the Wall
Street Journal’s The
Facebook Files . “Influencers,” i.e., those with hundreds of thousands of
followers, come out on top
in intra-company censorship, which is the work of thousands of Facebook
fact checkers. Just to give
a few examples, the football player Neymar can post pictures of a naked
woman; incendiary
comments from ordinary users such as “Hillary Clinton protected pedophile
circles”; or “Trump
called immigrants seeking asylum ‘animals.’” Despite being verified as
false by fact-checkers,
comments and images of this nature are nonetheless propagated because they
attract an audience.
It appears that Mark Zuckerberg’s proclaimed principle doesn’t check out:
“Facebook Inc. allows its
three billion users to speak with the same right and weight as political,
journalistic, and cultural
elites. Our standards apply to everyone and are impartial to their status
or reputation.”
Facebook’s Reaction
The company defended itself by attempting to dispel concerns, saying that
The Wall Street Journal
had only published part of the investigation. They then laid out all the
various sections of the
inquiry and claimed that the research demonstrates how this issue has been
given careful attention.
A few days after the scandal, on September 27, 2021, Adam Mosseri, head of
Instagram, announced
on the social network’s blog that Instagram Kids would temporarily be
suspended in order to further
develop this app made for children 6-12 years old. The intention would be
“to create tools for
parental supervision” during this time of suspension. For some time now,
the company has been
working on a plan to intercept some of its users, children especially, who
increasingly use other
platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok. Though, now they’ve decided to block
everything until
who knows when.
Just a few hours after Haugen’s hearing in Congress, it was time for
Zuckerberg to act. He began on
Facebook… spreading the text of a letter he sent to all employees in
which he claims that the money
the company gains isn’t important to him and that those who use his
platforms come first. He added
that the claims made by the former employee were simply “illogical”
accusations.
In short, the social network magnate isn’t having an easy time. Some months
ago he dealt with the
total temporary blackout of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which lasted
more than five hours
and cost about six billion dollars at the stock market. These losses are in
addition to direct losses of
about 900 million dollars. It’s easy to imagine that the issue of
Instagram’s dangers to teens won’t be
resolved anytime soon. Or at least, we should hope so, all things
considered.
How Can We Protect Our Children?
Many are wondering if the major social media networks aren’t so different
from the big tobacco
corporations in years past, who, despite knowing the dangers of substance
use, kept them secret.
It’s a fact that children, even before they learn to read, write, or even
speak, use social media and
other online platforms for hours on end every day, whether or not there is
parental supervision. Kids
will often falsify their ages in order to create accounts. We hope this
fact will shock parents and
bring their attention to how their children use social networks.
Many people around the world are asking: “If the alarm raised by Facebook’s
research is
unjustified, why were the results kept secret?” and, “Is Instagram Kids’
suspension a consequence
of the dissemination of private data and the fuss that was raised?”
These are questions that hopefully can be properly answered. Meanwhile, as
parents, we can simply
keep an even closer eye on how our children are using social media networks
and not leave them
alone to navigate them.