Social Media

How are Facebook and Instagram Harming Youth?

Controlling young people for profit

Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta), formerly known as Facebook, Inc., knew from its own research the ill effects its social media platforms were having on a significant percentage of young users, especially teen girls. Yet, it refused to take steps to reduce the harm.

Meta is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. The company generated $69.7 billion from advertising in 2019, more than 98% of its total revenue for the year. In other words, Meta makes billions of dollars marketing its user base—along with detailed data on their likes and interests—to advertisers to increase its profits.

Employing addictive psychological tactics to increase the use of their product

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram use email and text alerts and push notifications to inform users when they receive “likes” or “mentions.” According to a recent Harvard University study, when someone posts on social media and receives positive feedback, the brain releases dopamine, the body’s “feel-good” hormone, rewarding the behavior.

A similar brain conditioning occurs with addictive drugs. The brain releases dopamine when addictive drugs are consumed, reinforcing the connection between the drug and the resulting pleasure.

Similar to alcohol or drugs, people can become addicted to social media when they begin to use social networking sites as a coping mechanism to relieve stress, loneliness, or depression. Continuous use worsens moods and eventually interferes with relationships and work or school tasks. This encourages users to engage more with social media in search of relief, creating a vicious cycle that fosters a dependency on and addiction to social media.

Changing algorithms to use consumers’ data unethically

Facebook and Instagram are sneaky. They use advanced computer rules and processes, also known as algorithms and artificial intelligence, to collect and analyze users’ data. This information is used to assemble virtual files on their users, covering hundreds if not thousands of user-specific data segments. This data collection and analysis allows advertisers to tailor advertising and designate advertising dollars to very specific categories of users.

Many of these data segments are collected by Meta, scrutinizing each user’s activity on and off the platform. This assessment includes behavioral surveillance that users are not even aware of, like navigation paths, watch time, and hover time.

The bottom line is that the larger a social media platform’s user database grows, the more time users spend on the database. The more detailed information that platform can extract from its users, the more money it makes. 

Failing to protect young, vulnerable, and at-risk users

Parents are essentially defenseless against the tactics of Facebook and Instagram. They have features such as disappearing or time-sensitive messaging that prevent parents from exercising their rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use. Once their children become addicted to social media, it’s too late.

With the delicate, developing nature of the teenage brain combined with Facebook and Instagram’s addictive tricks, a generation of children have been trapped by products that have a long-lasting negative impact on their mental health.

The Facebook Whistleblower

In April 2021, a former Facebook employee resigned from the company and released a massive trove of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal. Those documents included research reports, online employee discussions, and drafts of presentations to senior management. They detailed how the social media platform lied or hid information from the public about several concerning matters, including its impact on young users’ mental health.

The WSJ published a series of reports based on those documents revealing how Facebook and Instagram knew of the problems with the platform but failed to fix any of the issues and, in some cases, made them worse.

The investigation revealed that Meta execs knew—based on their own research—that Instagram was toxic to young adults and teens, especially women and girls, largely harming their sense of worth and mental health. Also, the researchers found that features on Instagram that help foster the platform’s addictive nature are among the most harmful to young people. An example is Instagram’s Explore page, which offers posts based on users’ interests. Yet, the company never made this information available to lawmakers or the public.

On Oct. 3, 2021, CBS’ 60 Minutes aired an interview revealing the identity of the Facebook whistleblower—Frances Haugen. The data scientist worked as a product manager on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team. The following day, Haugen testified at a U.S. Senate hearing. She urged lawmakers to get involved and help solve the “crisis” created by her former employer’s products.

Haugen explained how Facebook’s algorithm prioritized creating more user activity than their safety. For example, she said that young users could be easily steered from relatively innocent content, such as healthy recipes, to content promoting anorexia.

“I came forward because I recognized a frightening truth: almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside Facebook. The company’s leadership keeps vital information from the public, the U.S. government, its shareholders, and governments around the world.”

Data Scientist and Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen in testimony to U.S. Senate Committee

Aftermath of the Facebook Whistleblower Testimony

Following her testimony before the U.S. Senate and the WSJ’s coverage, Haugen filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission. She claimed Facebook misled investors and advertisers by hiding or lying about what it knew about how its platforms were being used.

A bipartisan group of state attorneys general also announced an investigation into Meta for promoting Instagram despite knowing the detrimental effects the platform was having on users.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, also issued recommendations that social media and other technology companies help minimize the harmful effects of using their products. He urged the companies to prioritize young users’ well-being and share their data about the impact of social media with independent researchers.

“It’s time we stop trying to make a profit on kids’ developing brains. For the first time in human history, we have given up autonomous control over our social relationships and interactions, and we now allow machine learning and artificial intelligence to make decisions for us. We have already seen how this has created tremendous vulnerabilities to our way of life. It’s even scarier how this may be changing brain development for an entire generation of youth.”

American Psychological Association’s Chief Science Officer Mitch Prinstein