This week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri did what many corporate executives do when they’re facing a tidal wave of bad press: he went on a podcast. After several straight days of damning exposés from the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Facebook’s leadership has deliberately turned a blind eye to the toxicity of its platform—presumably informed by a whistleblower currently or formerly inside the company itself—Mosseri appeared on Peter Kafka’s Recode Media podcast to attempt to push back on the onslaught.
In particular, Mosseri was asked to respond to a report that Facebook is well aware that Instagram, which it owns, is detrimental to teen girls’ mental health. Asked whether the app should be taken offline, Mosseri replied, “I think anything that is going to be used at scale is going to have positive or negative outcomes. Cars have positive or negative outcomes. We understand that. We know that more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents. But by and large,” he continued, “cars create way more value in the world than they destroy. And I think social media is similar.”
The “scale” defense is an interesting one in context. According to the Journal, a March 2020 slide presentation compiled by researchers at Instagram and posted to Facebook’s internal message board reported that nearly one-third of teenage girls said they felt worse about their bodies thanks to Instagram. More than 40% of Instagram’s users are 22 and younger, and about 22 million teens log onto Instagram in the U.S. each day, per the Journal. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves,” researchers wrote, according to the Journal. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” read another presentation from 2019. “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression…This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
Rather than address the issues raised by their own research teams, the social media giant has downplayed them. “The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits,” Mark Zuckerberg told Congress during a hearing earlier this year. Following the Journal report, Karina Newton, Instagram’s head of public policy, wrote in a blog post that, “While the story focuses on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light, we stand by this research. It demonstrates our commitment to understanding complex and difficult issues young people may struggle with…The question on many people’s minds is if social media is good or bad for people. The research on this is mixed; it can be both.”
Whether or not the pitfalls of Instagram outweigh the benefits, as the company claims, is a question Congress is already demanding answers to. “Children and teens are uniquely vulnerable populations online, and these findings paint a clear and devastating picture of Instagram as an app that poses significant threats to young people’s wellbeing,” Senator Ed Markey and Representatives Kathy Castor and Lori Trahan wrote in a letter to Facebook Wednesday, seeking answers from Zuckerberg. “The recently uncovered evidence published in the Wall Street Journal underscores Facebook’s responsibility to fundamentally change its approach to engaging with children and teens online.” The lawmakers called for an end to Facebook’s “Instagram for kids” plan, which has already given rise to serious doubts. They added that they are “in touch with a Facebook whistleblower and will use every resource at our disposal to investigate what Facebook knew and when they knew it—including seeking further documents and pursuing witness testimony.”
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