Serious concerns have been raised about the impact of social media on teenagers’ mental well-being. Meta is now allowing a group of researchers to examine Instagram’s data to determine if social media is psychologically harmful to younger users.
The Verge reported that the Center for Open Science (COS) is launching a new joint pilot program with Meta to conduct independent studies on how social media affects teenagers’ mental health.
The Instagram Data Access Pilot for Well-Being Research program will undertake “independent academic” research using up to six months of Instagram data to explore the “potential positive or negative associations of Instagram use” among teens and young adults. The study will also analyze the positive and negative impacts on large populations globally and investigate the causes of “statistical relationships between Instagram and social or emotional health,” according to the program’s website.
The data accessible to researchers may include information on an Instagram user’s followers, the accounts they follow, account settings, and the amount of time they spend on the platform. Researchers will not have access to users’ demographic information or the content of their posts and comments. The data will come from accounts in 24 countries, including the US and UK, according to the request for proposal (RFP).
Other studies by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and New York University and Stanford have found similar links between social media use and mental health. This issue gained more attention last year when Arturo Béjar, a former director of engineering for Protect and Care at Facebook, testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. He revealed that he had alerted the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, via email about the dangers their product could pose to young people.
Béjar testified that, seven days before the hearing, 13 percent of Instagram users aged 13-15 had received unwanted sexual advances. He also noted that his own 16-year-old daughter experienced a momentary decline in mental health when someone commented that she should “get back to the kitchen” under one of her posts.
A month before the hearing, 41 states filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the company misled the public about the potentially addictive nature of its platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, for teenagers.
“My experience, after sending that email and seeing what happened afterward, is that they knew there were things they could do about it, they chose not to do them, and we cannot trust them with our children,” Béjar said during the hearing. “It’s time for Congress to act. The evidence, I believe, is overwhelming.”
