Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut had his office create an Instagram account for a fake 13-year-old to do research into what it’s like to be a child on the platform and found that following certain accounts led to recommendations promoting self-injury and eating disorders.
Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee’s panel on consumer protection and product safety, outlined what his office found through the fake account Thursday while grilling Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of safety, on the risks her company poses to children and teenagers’ mental health after revelations from internal research were leaked by a whistleblower.
In a rare instance of bipartisanship, senators on both sides of the aisle within the commerce committee were focused on holding Davis accountable for harms done to children on Instagram and slammed the social media giant for not doing enough to address the problems identified by its own employees and researchers.
“We created an Instagram account identifying as a 13-year-old girl and followed a few easily findable accounts associated with extreme dieting and eating disorders,” Blumenthal said during a Senate hearing on Thursday. “Within a day its recommendations were exclusively filled with accounts that promote self-injury and eating disorders.”
“Facebook has asked us to trust it, but after these evasions and revelations, why should we? It’s clear that Facebook has done nothing to earn that trust, not from us, not from parents, not from the public,” he added.
Facebook said Monday it was pausing the rollout of its planned Instagram Kids app following the recent scrutiny about the mental health of teenagers on its platform.
Nevertheless, internal Facebook documents released by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week show that although the company does not allow children under 13 years old to join any of its platforms, including Instagram, the company nevertheless formed a team to study preteens and set goals to create more products for them because it views them as a long-term business opportunity.
“Why do we care about tweens?” said one document from 2020. “They are a valuable but untapped audience.”
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Facebook says its internal research shows that Instagram is good for teenagers based on 11 of 12 metrics and that the Wall Street Journal’s assessment of internal research was “not accurate,” pushing back against claims that Instagram is “toxic” for teenage girls in a blog post earlier this week.
Senators also repeatedly referenced the addictive nature of Instagram and Facebook and accused the company of profiting off the suffering and pain of young children who don’t know how to protect themselves from dangerous online content.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts called Instagram “that first childhood cigarette” and said, “IG stands for Instagram, but it also stands for InstaGreed.”
“If Facebook has taught us anything, it’s that self-regulation is not an option,” he added.
Markey announced Thursday during the hearing that he would reintroduce the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act, first introduced last year, to stop online practices such as manipulative marketing, amplification of harmful content, and damaging algorithmic features that threaten young people online.
Earlier this year, Markey and Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana, introduced the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act to update online data privacy rules.
The bill would update a children’s privacy law Markey helped author in 1998 by prohibiting online platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat from collecting personal information from anyone 13 to 15 years old without the user’s consent.
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It would also create an online “Eraser Button” to permit users to remove personal information about children or teenagers and create a new Federal Trade Commission division focused on youth privacy and marketing.
