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Facebook Inc. released two internal studies Wednesday night examining Instagram use with adolescent mental health issues. In the process, the company seemed to downplay and sometimes criticize the work of its own researchers.
The studies were presented in a series of .pdf slides. The company posted annotations alongside the slides, many of which questioned the validity of the results and the framing of the internal studies. Facebook has twice referred to the slide titles as “nearsighted.”
In another slide, Facebook questioned employees’ understanding of their own research goals.
The company argued that an October 2019 slide titled “Teens Struggling With Mental Health Say Instagram Worsens It” needed to be “clarified” to say, “Teens who have lower life satisfaction are more likely to say that Instagram makes their sanity or the way they feel worse than teens who are happy with their lives.
“The annotations do not reflect our perspective on the researchers who carried out these studies, who are valued members of our team,” said Pratiti Raychoudhury, a Facebook executive who oversees her research, in a statement. “The annotations are there to provide the public with more context on the internal research and the limitations of the studies, which have always been intended to inform internal conversations between teams that already had this background so that they can improve our products and our practices. resources.”
The publication of the studies comes weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported on internal research on Instagram that found some teens felt worse after using Instagram. The investigation, which is part of the Journal’s Facebook Files series, raised concern among lawmakers in Washington, which culminated in Thursday’s hearing.
Shortly after Facebook released the research papers, the Journal released a larger body of material that helped form the basis of its Instagram and teenage reporting.
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