They reveal internal Facebook documents that claim Instagram is harming its users

Internal documents of the tech giant Facebook. reveal that the social network Instagram is deeply harmful to the mental health of its userss.

Studies by the same company indicate that the social network produces a “negative social comparison” and that “about 32% of women who use the social network feel less well in their body”.

The the information was published by the Wall Street Journal and consists of messages, slides and internal company documents, which show that its senior executives were aware of this damage and chose to ignore it.

According to the leaks, Facebook has been study how Instagram affects its users for three years. In 2019, an internal filing revealed that the social network “This worsens mental self-image problems in one in three adolescents ”.

In 2019, an internal filing revealed that the social network “This worsens mental self-image problems in one in three adolescents ”.

Another of the slides cited in the research states that ‘among teenage girls with suicidal thoughts, 13% of UK users and 6% of US users noted that the origin of his suicidal desire was Instagram “

The Wall Street Journal claims information was known to Mark Zuckerberg and that it was collected by company researchers through focus groups, online surveys and daily studies. TLarge-scale surveys of thousands of people were also carried out in 2021, which has been contrasted with Facebook’s data on its users’ behavior on Instagram.

Two studies cited in the leaks conclude that these issues are specific to Instagram and are based on the so-called “social comparison”.

This phenomenon values ​​users according to their attractiveness, their wealth and their success compared to others. Researchers point out that problems can be rooted in the heart of the social networkHe: “TikTok users are performance driven, while Snapchat users are protected by fun filters. On Instagram, they focus a lot on the body and the art of living ”.

At 2012 Facebook paid $ 1 billion to buy Instagram. Today, a large part of its audience is made up of teenagers. Over 40% of Instagram users are under 23, and around 22 million teens access Instagram daily in the United States alone.