Whistle-blower, Frances Haugen ended several hours of testimony on how Instagram harms young people. Following this, Facebook responded on Twitter that she ‘has no direct knowledge of the topic.’
Senator Marsha Blackburn invited the company to testify about its research on teens.,
Frances Haugen brought to light that Facebook researchers who studied teenagers over the past three years found that Instagram can damage their mental health and body image, especially amongst young girls. The document stated that Instagram exacerbated body image issues for teen girls already experiencing those feelings.
Ms. Haugen mentioned in her testimony how the teens on Instagram constantly compared themselves to polished accounts of people who use professional hair and makeup. Many of these Instagram users also used Photoshop, the software that can make photos look better, to portray an unrealistic standard of beauty, she said. Despite getting a “worse” feeling after viewing those accounts, teenagers often felt compelled to keep following them, she added.
Last Thursday, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, in a congressional hearing, had earlier said the documents were “not bombshell research.” She was hugely criticized for that comment, especially after the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, conducted its own research on teenagers and Instagram ahead of that hearing.
Mr. Blumenthal spoke of his experiment, where he created a “finsta,” or fake account, and posed as a 13-year-old girl. Then with the fake account, Mr. Blumenthal’s team “followed a few easily findable accounts associated with extreme dieting and eating disorders,” he said at last week’s hearing.
Mr. Blumenthal said, within a day, Instagram was suggesting accounts that promoted self-injury and eating disorders. “That is the perfect storm that Instagram has fostered and created,” he said.
“I have to be thin” and “eternally starved” were the names of some accounts that Instagram promoted, and that advocated extreme dieting, to Mr. Blumenthal’s fake teen account, he said.
Instagram later said the those accounts violated their rules and shouldn’t have been allowed on the platform.
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