“InstaGREED.”
That’s what U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) claimed the IG in Instagram really stood for at a Congressional hearing on Facebook’s effects on children’s mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection grilled Facebook’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, on Thursday over the company’s own research. The documents were leaked to the Wall Street Journal, which found that “Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of [teens], most notably teenage girls.”
Senator Markey wasn’t finished with Instagram with his play on words either. “Instagram is that first childhood cigarette meant to get teens hooked early,” Markey said.
The Senator from Massachusetts pressed Facebook’s Davis on whether the company would promise not to include features such as “like” numbers and follower counts on any service marketed towards children. Social media markers of popularity have created problems among kids, such as issues with depression and anxiety.
However, the Facebook representative would not commit, saying the company would continue to research the issue.
In response, Senator Markey recommended that Facebook fire all its researchers paid to look into the issue if the company felt like more research was necessary. “This is pretty obvious to every mother and father in our country,” Senator Markey said.
Markey followed up by asking Davis about banning influencer marketing to kids, another policy suggestion that Facebook did not commit to at the hearing.
The Senator criticized Facebook’s global head of safety for not having answers to what he deemed to be very obvious lines of questioning.
But Davis’ lack of an answer opened up an opportunity for Senator Markey to bring up the KIDS Act, a piece of legislation that he’s reintroducing that takes aim at children’s online content.
The KIDS Act enacts protections for online users under the age of 16 at the federal level. It would ban companies from using certain features, such as auto-play or push alerts, on platforms targeting children. It would also prohibit certain types of content, including influencer marketing media where hosts try to promote and sell products to children.
“If Facebook has taught us anything, it’s that self-regulation is not an option,” Senator Markey said.
Subcommittee chairman Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined Markey early in the hearing with harsh criticism for the social media company as well.
According to Blumenthal, his Congressional staff set up its own experiment and created an Instagram account identifying as a 13-year-old girl. He explained to Davis that the account was inundated with recommendations for “extreme dieting” and eating disorder content within a day.
Prior to the hearing, Facebook released some data from its research in order to defend itself. Facebook has insisted that the data has been misconstrued by the media and that its own research actually shows Instagram helped teens with issues such as loneliness, anxiety, sadness, and eating disorders.
However, the fallout from this research has led Facebook to halt plans to release an Instagram Kids for children under 13.
