news agency

Instagram says “help” teenagers and defends its “positive impact” on them

The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, defended this Wednesday before a subcommittee of the United States Senate its application against accusations that it is harmful to adolescents, and assured that, on the contrary, it has positive impacts on this age group.

The head of the popular image platform (owned by Meta), testified before the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection of the US Senate, where he was called upon following the publication of the so-called “Facebook papers”, a series of internal company documents leaked to the press in September.

Among other things, the leaked papers suggest that Instagram is harmful for a part of its younger users and that it is especially “toxic” for teenagers, since it “aggravates” the problems that one in three girls have with their body image .

Instagram “help“To teenagers

The information published about our internal investigations has been mischaracterized“Said Mosseri, who also assured that many teenagers have said that Instagram”helps them when they are suffering with the difficult moments of age”.

In September, The Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of articles based on internal company reports leaked to the press by an ex-worker indicating that Meta (then known as Facebook and that owns Instagram) prioritizes benefits to the safety and well-being of users.

The head of Instagram downplayed these studies – commissioned by the company itself – by ensuring that some of them were based on the experiences of only forty adolescents, and said that their sole purpose was to inform the company of the most negative perceptions of Instagram by users.

“(The studies) did not measure cause-and-effect relationships between Instagram and real-world problems,” he said.

An industry problem

Mosseri tried to convince senators that this is a problem that goes beyond a specific application, citing a poll according to which TikTok and YouTube are more popular with American teenagers than Instagram.

As young people use multiple platforms, it is critical that we treat their online security as an industry-wide challenge and develop industry-wide solutions and standards.”, He indicated.

Specifically, Mosseri suggested the creation of an entity that determines the best practices to follow with respect to three questions: how to verify the age of the users, how to design experiences that are appropriate to each age and how to create parental controls.

For his part, the chairman of the subcommittee, Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, accused Instagram and the rest of social networks of having “exacerbated and fueled the mental health crisis” that the United States is experiencing, although he admitted that the networks did not they were responsible for its creation.

Senators’ criticism

It is inexcusable that Facebook, knowing the damage that Instagram was causing, took a decade to start taking action on the matterThe Democratic senator snapped at Mosseri.

Blumenthal also stated that for there to be self-regulation by companies in this field, there must first be a situation of trust, something that the Senate does not currently have with Instagram and internet companies.

Also Senator for Tennessee Marsha Blackburn, the highest ranking Republican on the subcommittee, criticized that Instagram rejects “repeatedly assume responsibilities“And assured that the solutions proposed from the platform”they are too few and they arrive too late ”.

We know that Facebook and Instagram have encouraged teens to create secondary accounts in which to behave authentically to bypass parental controls”, le dijo Blackburn a Mosseri.

.

You may also like

Hot News

TRENDING NEWS

Subscribe

follow us

Immediate Access Pro