Internal Investigation Confirms Instagram “Toxic” to Teens | From body dissatisfaction to anxiety and depression

An internal Facebook investigation revealed that Instagram, owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s company, is harmful to adolescents. 32% of teenage girls said that when they feel issues with their bodies, Instagram makes them feel worse, is one of the findings of a March 2020 report, revealed by The Wall Street Journal. “Comparisons to what they see on Instagram can change the way young people see and describe themselvesAdds the report. From the company, for example, they did not confirm the information.

In 2018, Facebook began to investigate the impact of the photo social network on the habits of its youngest users. And Instagram’s toxicity appeared in adolescents, especially in girls.. “We make the body image problem worse for one in three teenagers,” a 2019 slide on impact on minors said. “Teens blame Instagram for increasing anxiety and depression,” was another finding.

In groups of suicidal teenage girls, 13% of UK users and 6% of US users blamed Instagram for wanting to kill themselves, according to the journalist’s Transcendent.

40% of Instagram users are under 23

The social network achieves a turnover of 100 billion dollars per year and It has 40 percent of its users who are under 23. An estimated 22 million teens in the United States use the app every day, a figure that is more than four times higher than Facebook’s five million a day. In turn, American teens spend 50% more time on Instagram than on Facebook. In the social network created by Zuckerberg in 2004, the sustained decline in its use among adolescents over the past decade is notable.

According to US media, Facebook “downplayed Instagram’s negative impact” on teens, and neither disseminated the research nor made it available to scientists and lawmakers who requested it. “The research we’ve seen shows that using social apps to connect with other people can be beneficial and positive for mental health.Zuckerberg said at a parliamentary hearing in March this year when asked about children’s mental health.

Last May, Instagram manager Adam Mosseri said research suggested the app may have had “relatively little effect” on teens. He assured that “in no way do I intend to minimize these problems. Some of the problems mentioned may not be generalized, but they keep having a big impact on some people.” In turn, he felt that Facebook was slow to see the problems of connecting people in such a massive way.

“I have been pushing for a long time for us to understand our responsibility more broadly,” he said on the matter. “For me, it’s not about airing dirty laundry. On the contrary. I am very proud of this research, ”he added.

The published documents indicate that Facebook has not moved to address these issues. He also revealed that the internal survey featured focus groups and large-scale surveys of thousands of people, which compared user responses to company data on how long Instagram was used.

Who did this work? Facebook employees in marketing, data science, and product development, many with backgrounds in psychology and computer science. There have been five presentations in a year and a half, from early 2020 to mid-2021.

The results include that some of the issues found are typical of Instagram and social media usage in general, and that Facebook executives reviewed the results. In turn, Zuckerberg himself brought it up during a presentation in 2020. Indeed, in March of this year, during a hearing before the United States Congress, the CEO defended the idea of create a social network derived from Instagram, aimed at children under the age of 13 and suggested that the effect on adolescents had been studied.