Facebook disputes its own research showing harmful effects of Instagram on teens’ mental health
Facebook has released internal research that examines Instagram’s impact on teenagers’ mental health before a US Congress hearing on Thursday.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, will appear in Washington on Thursday in a hearing exploring the impacts of the company’s products on young users.
Thursday’s hearing, starting at 10.30am EDT (3.30pm BST) follows a series of Wall Street Journal reports based on internal Facebook leaks, including a story that revealed research showing the harmful effects of Instagram on childhood mental health.
The research, commissioned by Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook, showed that the photo app could affect girls’ mental health on issues such as body image and self-esteem, the WSJ reported. Facebook issued an initial rebuttal of the revelations but on Monday it announced it was pausing work on Instagram Kids, which had been intended for users under the age of 13.
Late on Wednesday Facebook released two slide decks of research that it said formed the “primary focus” of the WSJ’s “mischaracterisation” of its work on the mental health impact of Instagram. The slides were accompanied by fresh annotations from Facebook that often criticised the presentation of the company’s own research, including describing one slide headline – directly quoted by the WSJ in its original reporting – as “myopic”.
The annotations repeatedly stress that the work is not fit to evaluate causal links between social media and mental health, despite the slides carrying headlines such as “teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens”.
The first deck includes a survey result that estimated that 30% of teen girls felt Instagram made dissatisfaction with their body worse, while a majority of overall users felt Instagram had no impact on mental health and wellbeing or made things better. It adds that social comparison is the top mental health issue that Instagram should care about. However, the headline on the slide cited by the original WSJ article – “we make body issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls” – is described as “myopic” in the accompanying annotation.
The survey involved more than 22,000 users across the US, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and India but fewer than 150 teenage girls in the survey responded to the body image
question. A slide that followed up with users who admitted they were having “hard moments” showed that in the majority of cases Instagram had “no impact” on issues such as anxiety and sleep issues.
A further slide shows that for teenage girls already having “hard moments”, one in three found Instagram made body issues worse. A further slide shows that one in three people who were finding social media use problematic found Instagram made it worse, with one in four saying it made issues with social comparison worse.
The second deck of research released by Facebook, headlined “teen mental health deep dive” is based on a survey of more than 2,500 teens in the UK and US. One slide shows that of Instagram users who had wanted to kill themselves, 6% in the US and 13% in the UK said that feeling had started on Instagram. In an annotated aside, Facebook said that only 16 respondents to its survey had reported suicidal thoughts. The same slide showed that for users who felt unattractive, around one in four in the UK and US said the feeling started on Instagram. Another slide shows that one in five teens say Instagram makes them feel negative about themselves, with UK girls (one in four) the most negative.
In one slide, a female British respondent to the survey says: “You can’t ever win on social media. If you’re curvy, you’re too busty. If you’re skinny, you’re too skinny. If you’re bigger, you’re too fat. But it’s clear you need boobs, a booty, to be thin, to be pretty. It’s endless, and you just end up feeling worthless and shitty about yourself.”
The WSJ reacted to the publication of the decks by releasing further internal Instagram slides, which included the headlines “users experience of downward spiral is exacerbated by our platform” and “social comparison is worse on Instagram”.
Richard Blumenthal, the chair of the Senate commerce, science, and transportation subcommittee on consumer protection, product safety, and data security, convened Thursday proceedings on the matter, called Protecting Kids online: Facebook, Instagram, and Mental Health Harms.
“Children and teens face immense peer pressure and social expectations to broadcast their lives online,” the subcommittee said in a statement announcing the hearing, adding that it would specifically be exploring the Facebook research exposed by the Journal report and “policy considerations to safeguard kids online”.
The hearing marks the latest congressional inquiry in a tumultuous few years for Facebook, which has been forced to send executives to testify on Capitol Hill a number of times about topics including misinformation and antitrust concerns.
Davis is the only Facebook executive whose presence has been announced before the hearing, but the committee member Marsha Blackburn said the hearing could include people from TikTok, Twitter, Snap and Googleowned YouTube.
Blackburn also told CNBC that her staff had spoken with the Facebook whistleblower who provided the internal documents to the Journal, and had been provided with the same documents. The whistleblower is expected to testify next week and appear on the CBS programme 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Children’s online safety advocates have called the pause on Instagram for Kids a victory but are encouraging the company to scrap plans entirely.
“Make no mistake that they are still going to try to build it,” said Jim Steyer, the founder and CEO of the nonprofit children’s media watchdog Common Sense. “The only thing they care about is hooking kids when they are most vulnerable, keeping them on the platform and getting access to as much of their personal data as possible. This is their business model that generates billions of dollars and they are not going to jeopardise that.”