One thing that seems to be uniting Republicans and Democrats is their concern for the effects of social media on children. Both Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Representative Bill Johnson (R-OH) have compared big tech services to big tobacco. “Instagram is that first childhood cigarette meant to get teens hooked early, exploiting the peer pressure of popularity, and ultimately, endangering their health,” Senator Ed Markey said. “The last thing we should allow Facebook to do is push young kids to use Instagram.”
Traditionally, social media sites have been restricted to those 13 and older (although it is possible to get around age restrictions). However, Google and Facebook are increasingly targeting younger children. Google launched YouTube Kids in 2015 as a child-safe version of the video site and Facebook created a version of Messenger for children. Both of these services have faced controversy when YouTube Kids allowed children to view videos with disturbing images and Messenger for Kids let children join chats with strangers.
Facebook is now working on a version of Instagram for children under 13. This news comes as the Wall Street Journal has published a series of articles titled The Facebook Files claiming that not only is social media potentially harmful to young users, but Facebook is well aware of that fact.
Although the number of young users on Facebook has been shrinking, Instagram (owned by Facebook’s parent company) gets about 22 million teens logging in each day. More than 40% of Instagram users are 22 and younger. For the past three years, Facebook has been studying how Instagram affects its young users. Here are some of their findings:
- Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls.
- Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was freely offered and not prompted by the interviewers.
- Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.
Facebook has not made this information public. In fact, in March 2021 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a Congressional hearing, “The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits.” Many legislators believed that Zuckerberg’s answers were incomplete and evasive. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, “Facebook’s answers were so evasive—failing to even respond to all our questions—that they really raise questions about what Facebook might be hiding. Facebook seems to be taking a page from the textbook of Big Tobacco—targeting teens with potentially dangerous products while masking the science in public.”
Following the Wall Street Journal’s publication of the Facebook Files, Facebook said the article mischaracterized its findings. In a blog post published 12 days after the article, the company’s head of research said many teens “feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced.” You can view Facebook’s original internal documents here.
Although Instagram says they are taking measures to make the Instagram experience more positive, they are still close-lipped about what those measures might include and any algorithm changes they may be considering. The question is what action regulators may take to make social media safer for kids and teens.
