The Dangerous Game Facebook in Playing with Data--and Teens' Lives

Facebook is playing a dangerous game by withholding data about the impact of its platforms on young people. The company has made it unnecessarily difficult for parents, policymakers, and technology scholars to fully understand how young people experience its platforms, and to protect teens from the harm Facebook exacerbates.

Facebook was recently forced to reveal that its internal studies show that some young people are disproportionately harmed by using Instagram. Its internal report on the topic reads: “… we make body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls.”?

Facing public scrutiny, Facebook’s research team would have us believe that the research was meant to safeguard kids by understanding what’s happening on its services. But the company refused to share these important data with doctors, teachers, researchers, and caregivers until Congress recently demanded it. The company has been aware of Instagram’s negative impact on millions of teenagers since 2019.

Perhaps, Facebook kept its internal studies secret for two years because its leaders prefer corporate profit over protecting young people’s lives. The company now confirms that large-scale, peer-reviewed studies published by independent researchers were right all along about the dangers young people can face from excessive use of social media platforms like Instagram. Why didn’t the company proclaim the researchers right, and help them find solutions, before it was in the regulatory hot seat?

Now Facebook plans to introduce several features on its platforms. The tools include prompting teens to take a break from using Instagram, nudging teens if they repeatedly look at content that is inconducive to their well-being, and setting up parental controls to allow parents to supervise teens. It remains to be seen how they will implement the controls and whether they will offer research that shows the tools are effective.

Here are the basic facts. For more than a decade, academics have studied the effects of social media on teens. The largest and most reliable of these studies show that most young people who spend several hours a day on social media experience it positively. Young people on services such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat tend to report the same or slightly higher well-being than their peers who barely use these services, if at all.

This research also makes clear that young people who spend the most time online are harmed because of social media. The harms include eating disorders, often mixed with depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Without a doubt, extensive social media usage can exacerbate mental health issues for kids who are already vulnerable.

So far, these studies only cover social media use pre-pandemic. That’s why, many of us who study youth and media were worried about the sharp increase in time young people spent on screens during the pandemic. On that score, we’ll just have to wait and see.

We need to take the revelation of Facebook’s research seriously for two reasons. First, Facebook is an extraordinarily powerful company whose service is making a dangerous issue worse, according to its own research. These data come to light just as Facebook is seeking to roll out a new platform for younger kids than those who are allowed to use its services now. We need to do everything in our power to address the mental health crisis facing young people, not make it worse. The benefits of social media for the many do not simply offset its harm to the most vulnerable.?

Second, for decades, the research community has been calling for social media companies to be helpful partners in studying what happens on their networks. Instead, they have made it almost impossible for independent researchers to access data to do reliable work.

Facebook and other companies have repeatedly fought to keep troves of data private. The irony is that the data are ours: about all our lives and our children’s lives. The data they hide are in fact just information that we provide these companies for free, grist for the mill that sells advertisements compelling us to click.

Facebook can do many things to improve, and regulation is overdue. In the early days of the internet, Americans — and Congress — were loath to introduce regulations that could diminish free speech or stifle innovation around the nascent technology. It’s time to stop thinking about internet companies as something that must be unregulated and view them as something akin to public utilities. Bills already in the works in Congress would mandate disclosures. Academics have proposed a wide array of platform accountability measures, such as “digital poison cabinets” for sensitive data.?

In the meantime, until Congress acts, Facebook should adopt a more open and collaborative relationship with the research community. May this forced disclosure be a wake-up call for Facebook to act on the data in its secret vaults and transparently work with the academic community to guarantee positive experiences for young people on its platforms.?

John Palfrey is president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a former professor at Harvard Law School, and served as Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. He co-authored Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age (with Urs Gasser; Basic Books, 2016).