Zuckerberg’s Meta company accused of putting younger users at risk

But this isn’t the first time the company has been in the spotlight for putting it’s young users at risk. In fact, it’s been proven that they are aware of the negative effects social media has for kids and teens, particularly Instagram, where more than 40% of users are 22 years old and younger.

Facebook’s researchers have repeatedly found that Instagram is toxic to a large percentage of them, particularly teenage girls, according to internal documents that were obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

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“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from a 2019 presentation that was posted to the company’s internal message board and viewed by the WSJ.

“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide seen by the WSJ.

Among teens who reported thinking about taking their own lives, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced that desire to Instagram, showed the presentation.

The Instagram documents are part of a trove of internal Facebook communications reviewed by the WSJ, that show that Facebook has not addressed these issues and actually minimises them to the public.

“The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a congressional hearing in March, when lawmakers probed him about children and mental health.

For Facebook, which paid $1bn for Instagram in 2012, expanding its base of young users has been crucial in recent years as fewer and fewer young users turn to Facebook for their social media needs, show the materials seen by the WSJ.