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Annie Zhu got an Instagram account when she was a freshman in high school. At first, she carefully edited her profile, showcasing different outfits and looks. She followed her body positivity and body neutrality accounts. But still, he sometimes compared himself to others and said, “that can make me feel bad.”
So when he listens to a podcast explaining how he recently Facebook’s research concluded that the Instagram it owns is toxic to teenage girls., he said, “doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“In my past experience, this has been a huge challenge,” Ms. Zhu, 18, a Stanford University freshman, said in an interview.
Among teens, the idea that Instagram can damage one’s self-image is widely debated. Ms. Zhu said she and her friends talked about how social interactions on Instagram felt unreal. He added that some friends deleted the app because they thought it wasn’t making a positive contribution to their lives. He said he now largely uses Instagram as a messaging system and rarely texts her.
“If you ask a young person, that’s something you deal with every day,” said Vicki Harrison, who runs the Center for Youth Mental Health and Welfare at Stanford. “You don’t need this research to tell you that.”
Ms. Harrison is working with the GoodforMEDia project, a peer counseling initiative for older teens and young adults, to share her experiences and advice on social media use. The teenagers she worked with told her that Instagram was the most difficult platform for them because of how flashy the users’ social media profiles were.
His experiences were echoed in Facebook’s internal research. documents a informant, Frances HaugenProvided to The Wall Street Journal, it showed that Instagram exacerbates body image problems for one in three teenage girls.
Facebook said the research did not show a causal link, and the majority of teenage girls with body image issues reported that Instagram made their body image better or had no effect.
Iris Tsouris, a freshman at Yale University, said that Instagram exacerbates her body image problems. While she follows some body positivity accounts, such content doesn’t appear in the algorithm-curated posts on the Instagram Explore page – instead she sees posts about replacing meals with iced coffee.
He said Facebook’s research was “not at all” eye-opening to him.
“It perpetuates negative self-image in people, things that can feed into eating disorders,” said 18-year-old Ms. Tsouris. “I’ve definitely seen people affected by jealousy or fear of losing.”
Still, some teens said they were happy with the research coming out, even if they weren’t sure what would change.
Claire Turney, 18, a University of Virginia freshman who attended high school with Ms. Tsouris, said it was “important for Facebook to know.” “I think it’s kind of messy that they know it’s disruptive and keep marketing it to young girls, but that’s capitalism.”
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