For the last three years, Facebook has studied how its Instagram photo-sharing app affects the mental health of its millions of young users, and the firm’s researchers have repeatedly found that Instagram is toxic to a substantial percentage of them, particularly teenage girls. 2012 is the year that Facebook started to see the number of teens using Facebook decline. This brings Facebook huge support among teenagers. And so Instagram became a part of this growth strategy to remain kind of relevant in the lives of young people. Young people matter so much to Facebook because Facebook has saturated the adult market in most of the developed world. Most adults are already users of Facebook.
There was an incredibly conflicted feeling many of the youngsters feel because majority of them perceive that the app is making them feel worse about themselves, yet they lacked the self-control in the moment to put it down and to spend less time on it. And this is reflected in Facebook’s own research, too: Teenagers described almost an addict’s journey with Instagram.
Instagram narrated it’s looking at new ways to discourage users from focusing on their physical appearance after The Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook researchers have repeatedly found that the photo-sharing platform is toxic for teen girls.
Facebook researchers concluded that some problems with teen mental health were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly, especially when it comes to “social comparison.” That’s when users focus on how their wealth, appearance or success stacks up against other people on the platform.
