Instagram can be toxic for youth. And Facebook has known for a while.
Issue #33
I'm glad social media didn't exist when I was growing up. Maybe you feel the same way. A lot of the adults I know certainly do.
When I was a kid, knowing your place in a social group was pretty straightforward. I remember feeling ecstatic when the phone rang and I was invited to parties or to somebody’s house to hang out and play video games. But today, we can tell someone we like them with a tap on a screen. Collecting likes and friends has become a scorecard to measure our social belonging, especially for kids growing up with these technologies. The rise of tech has drastically changed how we approach our sense of belonging by injecting instant feedback and convenience into our social interactions. Our sense of acceptance has shifted from a primarily subjective feeling to objective vanity metrics we accrue on social media.
If social media was around when I was a kid, I can imagine what metrics I might have looked for to understand where I stood in the group. I would have scrolled through my friends' feeds and compared their likes and followers to my own. I would have looked at their pictures and measured my appearance, my lifestyle, my self-worth—against theirs.
Instagram is the poster child of striving for perfection. I’ve written before that social validation is the number one thing I worry about as a parent, especially in the context of rising depression and anxiety rates among youth. Unlike many, I don’t solely place the blame on smartphones or social media, and in general, I’m pretty pro-technology. We could argue correlation vs causation all day, but I’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence to change the way I view technology and how I parent. The fact is that likes and followers matter to youth, and many measure their self-worth this way.
I've been concerned about the impact of social media on kids for a long time. It's why I started Kinzoo. It's why I published a book about kids and technology. But whenever parents, researchers or lawmakers raised questions about the effects of social media on children, Facebook and Instagram would assure us that there was nothing to worry about. In fact, they'd often suggest that social media could be good for our children.
But according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, that was some Olympic-level gaslighting from the tech giant. Apparently, their internal research confirmed that Instagram is toxic for young people—especially teenage girls.
According to Facebook's own research from 2020, "Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.” And in 2019, research stated, "We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
Okay, so clearly Facebook knew Instagram was a problem. And as the Wall Street Journal points out, "Facebook has made minimal efforts to address these issues and plays them down in public." As a parent with a moral compass, it's tough to imagine how they could do something like this. But sadly, it's also not surprising.
That's because Facebook is concerned with two things: user engagement and profits. Even when they release features under the guise of protecting users' mental health, their motives are self-serving. Giving users the option to hide like counts was really just a way for them to encourage people to keep posting. The pilot program, which Facebook called "Project Daisy," did not measurably improve users' wellbeing. Nonetheless, they rolled it out as an option anyhow. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook executives told Mark Zuckerberg that "[a] Daisy launch would be received by press and parents as a strong positive indication that Instagram cares about its users, especially when taken alongside other press-positive launches."
I'm not terribly surprised by any of these revelations. It just confirms what parents intuitively already knew. I just wish Facebook would be more upfront about the risks that come with Instagram. That, at least, would help parents have the right conversations with their kids about social media because these platforms aren't going anywhere. Facebook will continue to prioritize profits over users' wellbeing, so it falls to parents to guide their children in developing healthy habits. But if we want to have any hope of doing that, we need to know what we're dealing with.
I also hope these revelations will put another nail in the coffin for Instagram Kids. The last thing children need is a platform designed around comparison, competition and striving for some perception of perfection. That’s why I published an article titled “Instagram for Kids Isn’t a Bad Idea. It’s a Terrible Idea” for Red Tricycle back in May. Based on its own internal research, Facebook should know this too.
A deeper dive
Here are a few helpful resources in case you want to really dig into today's topic:
After testing the hidden like count feature, Facebook found no meaningful impact on users' mental health. Instagram's Adam Mosseri said, "The hope here was to try and depressurize the experience a little bit. It turned out that it didn’t actually change nearly as much about the experience in terms of how people felt or how much they use the experience as we thought it would."
Facebook's internal research has re-ignited the controversy over Instagram Kids. Lawmakers are once again pushing them to abandon their plans to release a junior version of the app. "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," wrote the Senators and Representatives. "We are deeply concerned that your company continues to fail in its obligation to protect young users and has yet to commit to halt its plans to launch new platforms targeting children and teens."
TL;DR
Too long; didn't read. It shouldn't be a full-time job to keep up on industry news, so here is a mercifully quick summary of some other notable developments:
Tech is becoming more integrated into our kids' education—and lots of schools are using Google Classroom to facilitate lessons and learning. Common Sense Media put together a great guide to help parents get up to speed on the technology. Check it out if you have any questions about the platform.
TikTok is hugely popular among kids, tweens and teens—and like any social platform, it comes with pros and cons. It can give kids the chance to get creative and meet like-minded friends, but it can also expose them to cyberbullying and sexual content. Check out this list from Cyberwise to learn more.
And lastly
Here are a few more pieces of original writing from me and my team—just in case you're keen for more:
At Kinzoo, we believe that kids deserve the best from technology. We want to give them tools that help them connect with loved ones, explore their creativity and cultivate new passions—and we design every feature with this in mind. Check out our latest post to learn how we incorporate the Three C's into our in our app!
When the news first broke about Instagram for Kids, my team outlined some of the reasons parents should think twice. Learn about some of the drawbacks here.
Okay, that's it from me until next time. If you enjoyed this newsletter, and know of another parent who would as well, please feel free to forward it along.