#FacebookHarmsUs

Facebook harms teens for profit

Facebook harms teens for profit

In August 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who was concerned about the real-world harms Facebook was contributing to, left the company and leaked thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents. These documents revealed:

  • Instagram harms the mental health of teenagers. Regular use of the popular Facebook-owned social media app caused distress in 30-40% of teenage girls.
  • Facebook’s algorithms exacerbate this problem. These systems actively promote pro-anorexia and other content that glorifies eating disorders.
  • Facebook knows its products are toxic for teens–but chooses not to act. In pursuit of increased engagement and profit, the company has repeatedly decided to ignore recommended solutions.
  • Despite these dangers, Facebook plans to target even younger children as future users. Efforts to target children as young as six-years-old were temporarily “paused” after the documents were released.

“Every time I feel good about myself, I go over to Instagram, and then it all goes away.”

17-year-old user (as reported in The Wall Street Journal)

Instagram’s alarming impact on teenage mental health

Thousands of internal Facebook research documents were released in 2021 to multiple media outlets showing that Instagram features and algorithms promote content that harms teenagers.The research concluded that images circulating on the popular platform tend to show perfect moments, thereby exacerbating anxiety and depression among teens, as well as stimulating suicidal thoughts.

Researchers found Instagram to be especially harmful for teenage girls’ body image. Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. This data was substantiated by a follow-up investigation initiated by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, which revealed that users indicating interest in dieting and weight loss are deliberately shown content glorifying eating disorders on their “explore” pages. The internal leaked research also documented negative impacts on teenage boys, with 14% saying Instagram “made them feel worse about themselves.” Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram.

Facebook disputed the conclusion that these documents proved Instagram negatively affects the mental health of teenagers. The Wall Street Journal subsequently published six of the original sources. The documents detailed the effects of Instagram on different groups of people according to age, gender, and nationality. Researchers studied Instagram’s impact on multiple issues (including body perception and satisfaction, depression and anxiety, and social comparison) and in each case found the platform harmed mental health or exacerbated existing issues.

Facebook knows about these risks but chooses not to intervene

Facebook’s internal research reveals the company has known about the harmful impacts of its product for years, but decided not to change its algorithms or design features.

Leaked documents show that researchers made specific recommendations to reduce these harms, which Facebook chose to ignore. Among them was the recommendation: “Rather than optimizing for engagement and then trying to remove bad experiences, we should optimize more precisely for good experiences."

Facebook’s reluctance to make choices that could reduce engagement can likely be attributed to its significant reliance on teenage use of Instagram. The company has already been losing the teenage users on which the company heavily p , as one internal report stresses. Facebook’s researchers found the platform’s user base has been aging faster, on average, than the general population. In February 2022, Facebook’s quarterly earnings were reportedly at an all-time low, which was attributed in part to the fact that increasingly young people are migrating to Tik Tok and other competitors.

Facebook plans to target children as young as six

An internal publication leaked to the press shows that Facebook has been developing products to target children as young as ages six to nine in an effort to grow its user base. Messenger Kids, Facebook’s figurehead pre-teen product aimed at children ages 6 to 12 years old, was discovered in 2019 to contain a “design flaw” that allowed young users to enter group chats with strangers. That same year, a presentation titled “Exploring playdates as a growth lever” was published internally.

In the face of sharp criticism after the release of the leaked documents, Facebook announced it was pausing its plans for “Instagram Kids” – but noted that the company still believes building the child-focused product is “the right thing to do.” Lawmakers in the United States responded by stating that a pause alone was “insufficient,” noting “Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online and it must completely abandon this project.”

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