It’s been about two weeks since the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a report saying that Instagram is negatively impacting teens and making girls feel bad about their bodies and bodies. The American newspaper also said that Facebook is aware of this negative influence of Instagram on teens, since the conclusions are drawn according to the company’s own data. Now, Facebook is responding to this report through the company’s Vice President and Head of Research, Pratiti Raychoudhury. Raychoudhury’s post on Facebook Newsroom claims that Facebook’s data does not show that Instagram is toxic for teens and that the WSJ has probably misinterpreted the data at its disposal.
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On September 14, the Wall Street Journal published a story on The Facebook Files, a series of stories based on a massive cache of internal Facebook documents that were leaked to the newspaper. The September 14 report focused on data suggesting that Instagram is having an extremely harmful effect on teenagers — especially teenage girls. The WSJ alleged that Facebook is well aware of Instagram’s negative impact on teens and that it is not doing much to address these issues.
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Facebook's global head of safety, Antigone Davis, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Thursday to answer the allegations made by the WSJ. Raychoudhury says in her post that before Davis appears, the company wanted to clarify a few things about the issue.
Raychoudhury seems to be ignoring some of the more important issues raised by the WSJ, such as the fact that Instagram is addictive for teens, which they themselves understand and report. Instead, she seems to be trying to discredit the company’s own research. Raychoudhury argues that the WSJ drew its conclusions using a Facebook survey that had only 40 participants. That’s an extremely small sample size for any survey, let alone one on a platform used by more than 1 billion users. This small study was designed to examine some of the negative perceptions teens have about Instagram, Raychoudhury claims.
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Raychoudhury also focused on the WSJ report that one in three teenage girls feels worse about their bodies because of Instagram. Raychoudhury emphasizes that body image was just one of 12 potential problems that Instagram worsened. “Body image was the only area where teenage girls who reported struggling said Instagram made it worse,” she writes. In contrast, Raychoudhury argues that the study found that Instagram made teens feel better in most cases. She also notes that the company doesn’t keep data private and that Facebook has spoken out in the past about the social media’s shortcomings.
Without seeing the Facebook survey data, we can't judge who is right. However, there is a possibility that the disagreements between Facebook and the Wall Street Journal will continue.
Source: The Verge
