One of the findings that the Wall Street Journal exposed in its reporting on the leaked Facebook material is that 32% of girls who felt bad about their body knew that their consumption of Instagram content made them feel worse.
The impact on girls was extensive:
For some of the teen users, the peer pressure generated by Instagram led to mental health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research leaked by Haugen showed.
The Journal also reports:
Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that it could lose a wave of users critical to its future. “Why do we care about tweens?” said one document from 2020. “They are a valuable but untapped audience.”
Facebook has offered a defence to the increased public concern prompted by the leaked documents over the effect on young users and its efforts to create products for them. It also announced it was holding off on launching a kids' version of Instagram.
However, the Journal declares:
Researchers inside Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, have been studying for years how its photo-sharing app affects millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls, more so than other social-media platforms.
In public, Facebook has consistently played down the app’s negative effects, including in comments to Congress, and hasn’t made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it. In response, Facebook says the negative effects aren’t widespread, that the mental-health research is valuable and that some of the harmful aspects aren’t easy to address.
Internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the company formed a team to study preteens, set a three-year goal to create more products for them and commissioned strategy papers about the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users. In one presentation, it contemplated whether there might be a way to engage children during play dates.
In her testimony to Congress, Haugen said Facebook is designed to exploit negative emotions because people spend more time on the platform.
“They are aware of the side effects of the choices they have made around amplification. They know that algorithmic-based rankings, or engagement-based rankings, keeps you on their sites longer. You have longer sessions, you show up more often, and that makes them more money.”
Facebook’s annual revenue has more than doubled from $56 billion in 2018 to a projected $119 billion this year, based on the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Meanwhile, the company’s market value has soared from $375 billion at the end of 2018 to nearly $1 trillion now.
She also told Congress:
“Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy. The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”
“Congressional action is needed. They won’t solve this crisis without your help.”
This report of her testimony goes on:
Haugen suggested, for example, that the minimum age for Facebook’s popular Instagram photo-sharing platform could be increased from the current 13 to 16 or 18.
She also acknowledged the limitations of possible remedies. Facebook, like other social media companies, uses algorithms to rank and recommend content to users’ news feeds. When the ranking is based on engagement — likes, shares and comments — as it is now with Facebook, users can be vulnerable to manipulation and misinformation. Haugen would prefer the ranking to be chronological. But, she testified, “People will choose the more addictive option even if it is leading their daughters to eating disorders.”
This is where parents must come in to ease the minds, and sometimes save the lives, of their children. This blog has pointed out previously how children have been found to be caught up in peer-driven contagion of belief that they should identify as the opposite sex or that they are homosexual. For those posts see here, here and here.
But for an in-depth approach to safeguarding children on social media and video games, parents will do well to act on this advice from Courtney Chase, the executive director of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington’s Office of Child and Youth Protection and Safe Environment:
Most recently predators have been using gaming systems – such as X-Box and PlayStation – to contact young people. Predators try to entice a child with game credits, e-cash and other “high value temptations.”
“We want parents to be educated and aware that predators are now infiltrating once-safe devices. The struggle is to get students to understand that predators camouflage themselves as students. They study and learn the environment that students inhabit and pretend to be a student, maybe from another school.”
Chase said that predators will “groom, coerce and intimidate (young people). And these crimes do not discriminate” based on race or gender.
Sometimes when a young person has been tricked or coerced into sending or sharing sexually inappropriate images, the predator will then blackmail or threaten the youth with exposure unless the interaction continues.
“Many times a child is afraid to come forward because they feel their parents will take away their phones or their computers. The key for parents is to have information and open lines of communication.”
In addition to sexual exploitation, social media are also employed by some students to bully others. “Bullying on social media causes damage you cannot imagine,” she said.
“Parents think that the schools and principals can control this, but the answer lies in the home."
Therefore, she offers these tips, where rules would be adjusted according to age:
🔆 Parents should not be afraid to ask their children questions – "Discussion and planning are open and active parts of keeping children safe."
🔆 Parents should have the passcodes for all their child’s electronic devices – phones, tablets and computers.
🔆 Parents should actively monitor each of their child’s social media accounts.
🔆 Keep families safe by not including identities or locations on pictures posted online.
🔆 Be careful about posting pictures with a (child wearing a) school uniform. The uniforms can be identified and traced and can lead to stalking. Some hackers also can put a child’s face on sexually inappropriate images.
🔆 Because some homework assignments may require Internet research, “there should be a central place where a child works so that parents can monitor Internet activity”.
🔆 Parents should make sure they know the name of every person to whom a child sends a text. Children should not be texting to numbers the parents do not recognize or know.
🔆 Monitor the frequency of texting to a particular number. The amount of texts – and the time of those texts – could be a red flag. “It is imperative that kids never hide their phone from their parents,” Chase said.
🔆 All electronics should be stored overnight in one designated place and parents should impose “an electronic curfew” on their child. Chase said this limits overnight, unsupervised texting and social media usage.
By setting limits in this way, children have an excuse not to engage with online activities they would rather not be involved with.
In essence, with this serious threat to a child's well-being, it comes down to each parent fully appreciating their God-given role in striving to protect their children. In other words:
Parents, know your dignity!
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