WASHINGTON — After more than a week of press ranging from bad to worse, Facebook sent global head of safety Antigone Davis to Congress with a clear message on Thursday: highlight the positive.
Testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, Davis tried her best. Over two-plus hours of questioning, Davis was met with harsh questioning from lawmakers from both parties criticizing the highly influential social media company.
“Our research showed that many teens who are struggling say that Instagram helps them deal with many of the hard issues that are so common to being a teen,” Davis said in her opening statement.
Recent reporting has suggested otherwise. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that over the last three years, Facebook has conducted internal studies on the effects of Instagram — the photo-sharing app the company purchased in 2012 — on the millions of young people who use the app every day.
Those studies overwhelmingly showed Instagram caused harm to the mental health of young users, most notably teenage girls. According to the WSJ investigation, Facebook’s researchers found that nearly one-in-three teen girls reported that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Surveying teens who reported having suicidal thoughts, six percent of American users and 13% of British users said those thoughts traced back to their use of Instagram.
The WSJ reporting was reinforced by a Facebook whistleblower, who delivered “thousands of pages” of documents to subcommittee Chairman Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Next Tuesday, Facebook’s whistleblower will appear before Congress to testify on the documents delivered to the Senate.
Despite the results of the research, Facebook’s public statements contradicted their findings. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, have consistently downplayed Instagram’s negative impacts on young users, and instead maintained much of the same messaging Davis repeated Thursday.
“This research is not a bombshell,” Davis said. “We conduct this research to minimize the bad and maximize the good…. The most important thing about our research is what we’ve done with it.”
Throughout the hearing, senators consistently contested Davis’ characterization of the research.
“If this is not bombshell research, then what would be?” asked Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Lawmakers called for Facebook to release the entirety of their own research, citing a lack of trust and transparency from the company following years of repeated scandals relating to data privacy,
“We know Facebook is indefensibly delinquent in protecting [young users],” Blumenthal said. “How can we as parents, or anyone, trust Facebook?”
“You’ve lost trust, and we do not trust you with influencing our children,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., reiterating the sentiment.