Why Facebook is holding off on kids’ Instagram
FILE - This Friday, Aug. 23, 2019, file photo shows the Instagram app icon on the screen of a mobile device in New York. Bowing to pressure from lawmakers, critics, the media and child development experts, Facebook said Monday, Sept. 27, 2021, it will “pause" its work on a kids' version of its photo-oriented Instagram app. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
Bowing — perhaps only for a moment — to pressure from lawmakers, critics, the media and child development experts, Facebook said Monday it will “pause” its work on a kids’ version of its photo and video-oriented Instagram app.
But what’s not yet clear is just how seriously Facebook is taking the concerns of experts and parents. Its decision to merely pause the project suggests it still plans to expose a much younger audience to Instagram, its well-documented harms and possibly the user profiling that feeds Facebook’s targeted ad machine. That ad machine, of course, has made the company one of the most profitable on the planet.
WHY IS FACEBOOK DOING THIS NOW?
The company’s move follows an explosive mid-September report by The Wall Street Journal that found Facebook knew from its own research that Instagram was harming some teems, especially girls, leading to mental health and body image problems and in some cases eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.
In public, however, Facebook has consistently played down the app’s negative side and until now has barreled ahead with the kids’ version despite alarms from experts, lawmakers and its own research. It has also relentlessly criticized the Journal article as cherry-picking from Facebook’s research, though it did not dispute the facts. That story, however, was based on internal research leaked by a whistleblower at the company.
It’s likely not a coincidence that on Thursday, a panel of the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing examining the “toxic effects” of Facebook and Instagram on young people. It’s the latest of several hearings to look at whether Big Tech companies are hiding what they know about the harms their products cause.
SO IS INSTA FOR KIDS CANCELED?
Facebook has very specifically not said that it will abandon the project. Instead, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in a blog post Monday that the company will use its pause time “to work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the value and need for this product.”
Translation: Expect Facebook to sharpen its message on the “benefits” of Instagram for Kids in hopes that the furor will die down.
Consider that Facebook had already said it was working with parents, experts and policymakers back in July when it introduced safety measures for teens on its main Instagram platform. In fact, the company has been “working with” experts and other advisors for another product aimed at children — its Messenger Kids app that launched in late 2017.
“Critics of Instagram Kids’ will see this as an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea,” Mosseri wrote. “That’s not the case.”
WHO ARE THE EXPERTS WORKING WITH FACEBOOK?
Four years ago, Facebook said it gathered a group of experts in the fields of online safety, child development and children’s media to “share their expertise, research and guidance.” The group it calls Youth Advisors include some well-known and some lesser-known nonprofit groups, including the Family Online Safety Institute, Digital Wellness Lab, MediaSmarts, Project Rockit and the Cyberbullying Research Center.
All of these groups receive some form of funding from Facebook, according to their websites. Meanwhile, some of the best-known children’s online advocacy groups — and Facebook’s biggest critics on this matter — such as Common Sense Media and Fairplay (formerly known as the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood) are notably absent.
Critics acknowledge that many of the cooperative experts mean well, but say their influence has been negligible. “Facebook has shown time and time again that it is incapable of governing or advising itself with any integrity,” said Kyle Taylor, program director for the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a group critical of the social network. “Facebook’s funding of research and civil society is hugely problematic, and prevents the kind of direct, open process that is required for any real change to occur.”
When Facebook seeks feedback for its projects, Taylor added, “the decks are always stacked with experts who have a financial interest or who will never criticize Facebook’s core issues - their algorithm and their profit margin.”
COULD FACEBOOK STILL PULL THE PLUG?
Fairplay executive director Josh Golin argues that Instagram for Kids may have already sunk beneath the waves. The “pause,”′ he said, is a good way for Facebook to save face and hope that after a while people will forget about it.
He acknowledges that his group and other advocates failed to pressure Facebook into canceling its kids’ messaging product, but says Instagram for Kids is different.
“Instagram is a much much worse platform for children” than Messenger, he said, noting Facebook’s own internal research and a “wealth of evidence” supporting this point. The climate has also changed since 2017 and 2018, when the “techlash” against Big Tech’s harmful effects on society was just emerging. Now, it’s in full force and much more organized. Finally, there’s tech product inertia.
“With Messenger Kids, the backlash didn’t start until it had already came out,” he said. “It is much easier for a corporation to walk back a product that doesn’t yet exist than to take a product off the market,”
WHAT ABOUT OTHER PLATFORMS?
Facebook, of course, is not the only tech platform whose products have caused ripples of concern about the well-being of children. And creating kids’ versions in the face of these concerns is a popular response. After getting in trouble with U.S. regulators for violating children’s privacy rules, for instance, TikTok created a “limited, separate app experience” for users who are under 13. They can’t share videos, comment on other people’s videos or message people. But as with any other app, if kids enter a fake birthdate when they register with the app, they can get around that provision.
YouTube has a kids version too. Lawmakers earlier this year called it a “wasteland of vapid consumerist content” and launched an investigation that’s still ongoing.
Facebook acknowledges Instagram's damage to teen mental health, but says there's good stuff too
Facebook admitted Instagram does make some teenagers' mental health worse, but claimed it improves others. Credit: Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal published a report stating that Facebook's own in-house research revealed Instagram has a significant negative impact on teenagers' mental health. Now Facebook has responded, basically saying it's a matter of interpretation.
In a blog post published on Sunday afternoon, the social media giant claimed The Wall Street Journal's Sept. 14 article had mischaracterised Facebook's research, as well as left out important context.
"Suggesting that Instagram is toxic for teens is simply not backed up by the facts," wrote Facebook researcher Pratiti Raychoudhury.
On the face of it, the facts certainly look damning. The Wall Street Journal viewed several internal Facebook documents discussing the issue of teen mental health, the company having performed various focus groups and surveys between 2019 and 2021. Among the documents cited was a 2019 presentation on Instagram, which stated, "We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls."
However, Facebook alleges that in context this simply meant Instagram makes body image issues worse for girls who already have such issues, not one in three teen girls overall. This still isn't great by any means, but at least it isn't as bad as it could have been.
"And, among those same girls who said they were struggling with body image issues, 22% said that using Instagram made them feel better about their body image issues and 45.5% said that Instagram didn’t make it either better or worse (no impact)," wrote Raychoudhury.
Of course, Facebook doesn't state what percentage of teenage girls it surveyed self-reported having body image issues, which seems like a relevant bit of info. One in three of 30 percent is a much different statistic to one in three of 90 percent.
Facebook was unable to provide Mashable with this information when reached for comment, but a spokesperson stated not all surveyed girls who reported body image issues were asked about Instagram's impact.
Still, as the slide shared by Facebook indicates, more surveyed teen girls with body image issues thought Instagram made this problem worse than better. But Facebook also noted that Instagram was good at other things, with surveyed teens stating Instagram made other issues such as "sadness" better in situations where they had "felt sadness in the past month."
"Body image was the only area where teen girls who reported struggling with the issue said Instagram made it worse as compared to the other 11 areas," wrote Raychoudhury. "Our internal research is part of our effort to minimize the bad on our platforms and maximize the good. We invest in this research to proactively identify where we can improve — which is why the worst possible results are highlighted in the internal slides."
Facebook further addressed The Wall Street Journal's concerning revelation that the company's research found 6 percent of American and 13 percent of British teens who reported suicidal thoughts traced their origins to Instagram.
"When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram," said Raychoudhury.
According to Facebook, 1296 American and 1309 British teens participated in the relevant survey, which means around 26 reported that their suicidal thoughts began on Instagram. The company acknowledged that any number above zero is not good, but also claimed 38 percent of surveyed teenage girls who experience suicidal thoughts stated Instagram makes the problem better for them.
Facebook's general defence to all of The Wall Street Journal's revelations basically boiled down to the good outweighing the bad, with more surveyed teens considering Instagram's impact to be positive than negative. The company also stressed that, in addition to contextual considerations of the data, their research itself should be put into context.
"This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram," wrote Raychoudhury. "These documents were also created for and used by people who understood the limitations of the research, which is why they occasionally used shorthand language, particularly in the headlines, and do not explain the caveats on every slide."
Facebook characterised its research as evidence the company is taking steps to tackle Instagram's problems, citing steps it's undertaken such as providing links to eating disorder hotlines, banning graphic images of self harm, and allowing users to limit interaction from non-followers.
"We have a long track record of using our research...to inform changes to our apps and provide resources for the people who use them," wrote Raychoudhury.
Sadly, implementation of said changes has historically been slow. Instagram only announced it would start linking to eating disorder hotlines in February this year, after being in operation for over a decade and knowing of the issue for almost as long. Facebook also has a history of downplaying or ignoring the potentially negative influences of its services — it is a trillion-dollar company, after all. But at least it's something, I guess.
Instagram Is Doing Grave Harm to Our Generation. We Need Help to Stop It
Elva Etienne
Although Destinee was just 13 when she created her first Instagram account in 2012, she was late to the world of social media. She remembers standing in her best friend’s bathroom, posing in front of the mirror as her friend taught her how to take a selfie.
“Stand right here,” the friend said, grabbing Destinee’s arm. “Hold the camera up higher and put your hand on your hip.”
Destinee was wearing makeup that was too light for her dark complexion, and she struggled to keep her eyes open after applying too much of the thick black mascara she took from her friend’s mother’s makeup drawer. She posed anyway. She did not have a smartphone, so her friend loaned her an iPad to access Instagram.
“Finally,” her friend said as Destinee tapped the button to create an account.
Like most young people, Destinee quickly learned how to use Instagram for social gain. If she used more than one filter she received more likes, and if she showed more skin, she received more comments. She was obsessed with increasing her engagement—likes, comments and shares—because the more she received, the more she felt she was positively perceived by her peers.
But after years of trying to reach Instagram’s impossible standards, she began to develop an overwhelming fear of rejection and uneasiness. She would stare at her screen for hours after uploading one picture, anxious about the reaction she would receive and whether people would approve of her.
Then, this month, at age 22, Destinee was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder—which is common among her peers. The tipping point, which made her seek help from her doctor, was an Instagram post she made about her grief after losing her father. She went back and edited the caption several times after posting it, each time trying to add a more optimistic tone—one that would be more likely to win approval from her followers. Her doctor told her the pressure she feels to present herself as someone other than her authentic self is the key factor to her diagnosis.
As two members of Generation Z, no one we know is doing well mentally, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from their Instagram posts, which usually show our friends only smiling. There’s an insurmountable pressure to perform.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Facebook knows Instagram can be mentally detrimental for teenagers and young adults. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” a Facebook presentation quoted by the Journal said.
Facebook also found young women have been diagnosed with eating disorders, anxiety, depression, or had suicidal ideations—all linked to their usage of Instagram. According to Facebook’s own study, reported by the Journal, 13% of British users and 6% of American users who reported suicidal thoughts traced the desire to harm themselves to Instagram. This study solidified years of anecdotal accounts of what we already knew: Instagram is killing us.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s business model is to monetize user information and maximize profit over privacy, and it has no incentive to change. How many teenagers and young adults have to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression or an eating disorder before social media platforms take action?
As regular social media users who grew up online, this is what must be done:
First, Mark Zuckerberg and Mosseri must be held accountable for their misleading and vague responses to the media and Congress. Earlier this year, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers asked Zuckerberg for the company’s internal research about the mental health effects Facebook and Instagram can have on young people. Facebook failed to provide the data.
Second, Congress must provide social media users with a platform to discuss the side effects of regular social media usage. Teenagers and young adults need a safe place to share their experiences and interactions with elected officials, even in a formal hearing.
Third, elected officials must understand social media is the main way that many young people socialize—especially after the pandemic, but it needs regulation. Deleting the apps is not an option for many young people; it has a social price that most are unwilling to pay. Users need effective regulation to help them protect themselves, such as banning targeted ads for kids and teens, safeguards to restrict the collection of user data, and tools to stop endless scrolling.
Destinee had her wake-up call when she sought treatment for her anxiety disorder. She is learning to develop a healthier relationship with social media.
These revelations must be a wake-up call for our entire generation—and the people who have the power to force change.
