US lawmakers have reprimanded Facebook following the revelation that the social media giant was aware of how Instagram was harming the mental health of teenagers.
Company officials were summoned to a hearing before the Senate consumer protection subcommittee on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal’s expose revealed that Facebook knew its Instagram app was causing teenage girls to feel bad about their self-image.
“This research is a bombshell!” said Democrat senator Richard Blumenthal. “It is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence that Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children, and that it has concealed those facts and findings.”
In a series of reports, WSJ used Facebook’s own internal research from leaked documents to show the company’s plans to make an Instagram app for kids below 13.
Though Facebook presented the new plan as a safer alternative for children, lawmakers told the company that it could not be trusted to make a platform for children.
“If they (Facebook) were really committed to kids’ safety, if there were real-world evidence of it, I might think differently about it. But Instagram for kids is plainly just more of the same,” said Blumenthal.
Earlier this week, Facebook had to put plans to release Instagram Kids on hold after growing opposition towards it.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global security, who testified at the hearing, said that WSJ had misrepresented what the research showed. She also said the company would release additional internal studies to be more transparent about its findings.
“We care deeply about the safety and security of the people on our platform. We take the issue very seriously…. We have put in place multiple protections to create safe and age-appropriate experiences for people between the ages of 13 and 17,” said Davis.
She denied that the research was a “bombshell” but senators from both US major parties would not hear of it.
“For the parents that are losing their children, it is a bombshell in their lives,” said Republican senator Ted Cruz. He pointed out a statistic from the internal research that said of American teenagers who reported suicidal thoughts, six per cent of them traced those thoughts back to Instagram.
“IG stands for Instagram but it also stands for Insta-greed,” said Democrat senator Edward Markey.
A second hearing is scheduled for October 5 and will feature a Facebook whistleblower.