WASHINGTON – United States lawmakers yesterday demanded pledges from Facebook to address escalating worries about its platforms’ impact on teenagers’ mental health, but a top executive instead offered assurances that the sites are already safe.
Senators grilled the social media giant’s Antigone Davis in an hours-long Capitol Hill hearing called over damning reports that Facebook’s own research warned of the harm that photo-sharing app Instagram can do to teen girls’ well-being.
“This research is a bombshell. It is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence that Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children, and that it has concealed those facts and findings,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Davis, under questioning from Blumenthal and other senators, repeatedly said a Wall Street Journal series had selectively chosen parts of its studies to give an inaccurately dark vision of the company’s work.
She told lawmakers that a survey of teens on 12 serious issues like anxiety, sadness and eating disorders showed that Instagram is generally helpful to them.
“On 11 of the 12 issues, teen girls who said they struggled with those issues were more likely to say that Instagram was affirmatively helping them, not making it worse,” said Davis, who delivered her testimony remotely.
Yet, Blumenthal read aloud excerpts from company documents, which he said were leaked to lawmakers by a Facebook whistle-blower, that directly contradict her.
FB whistle-blower
“Substantial evidence suggests that experiences on Instagram and Facebook make body dissatisfaction worse,” said Blumenthal, adding that the finding is not a disgruntled worker’s complaint, but company research.
A Facebook whistle-blower is set to testify before senators on Tuesday, but it is not immediately clear if that person is also the source of the leaked documents.
The social media titan has faced a growing backlash, including yesterday’s hearing, in the wake of the WSJ reports, and it has halted work on a fiercely criticised plan to make a version of Instagram for children under 13.
Facebook argued that a specially designed platform will allow some parental control in an online world already full of children, but critics called it a cynical strategy to hook the youngest users.
Lawmakers yesterday demanded a pledge from the firm to release all of its research, and not to take aim at pre-teens.
“Ms Davis, will you commit that Facebook will not launch any platforms targeting kids 12 and under that include features... that allow children to quantify popularity?” asked Senator Ed Markey.
Davis sidestepped his query, instead saying that the company’s products “enrich” lives by allowing teens to connect with friends and family.
She said Facebook is looking into ways to share more of its findings, but that there are “privacy considerations” to take into account.
On Wednesday, the firm released a heavily annotated version of two presentations on its own research, but it is unclear what percentage they represent of its internal studies.
Facebook has been under relentless pressure to guard against being a platform where misinformation, hate and child-harming content can spread.
Legislators have struggled to pass new rules to update online protections in decades-old laws crafted long before social media even existed. – AFP, October 1, 2021
