https://www.npr.org/2021/09/30/1041864356/instagram-kids-safety-congress-hearing

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Senators Blast Facebook For Concealing Instagram's Risks To Kids Days
after Facebook's Instagram "paused" work on an app for kids under 13,
U.S. senators grilled the company's head of safety about how both
platforms negatively affect teens and young people.

Technology

Senators Blast Facebook For Concealing Instagram's Risks To Kids

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September 30, 20212:45 PM ET
Shannon Bond

Shannon Bond

Twitter

Senators Blast Facebook For Concealing Instagram's Risks To Kids

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Antigone Davis, Facebook's global head of safety, testifies remotely
Thursday before a Senate subcommittee following leaks of internal
research showing the company knows the harm its apps cause young
people. Patrick Semansky/Pool/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Patrick Semansky/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Antigone Davis, Facebook's global head of safety, testifies remotely
Thursday before a Senate subcommittee following leaks of internal
research showing the company knows the harm its apps cause young
people.

Patrick Semansky/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (en espanol:
888-628-9454; deaf and hard of hearing: 800-799-4889) or the Crisis
Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

Senators accused Facebook on Thursday of concealing and ignoring the
ills its apps, including Instagram, pose to children and teens amid a
widening outcry over revelations from internal research leaked by a
whistleblower.

"We now know that Facebook routinely puts profits ahead of kids'
online safety. We know it chooses the growth of its products over the
well-being of our children," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
"The question that haunts me is how can we, or parents, or anyone
trust Facebook?"

Lawmakers Push Facebook To Abandon Instagram For Kids, Citing Mental
Health Concerns

Technology

Lawmakers Push Facebook To Abandon Instagram For Kids, Citing Mental
Health Concerns

His fellow Democrat, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, compared
Facebook to "Big Tobacco: pushing a product they know is harmful to
the health of young people, pushing it to them early, all so Facebook
can make money."

Fielding their questions was Antigone Davis, the social media giant's
global head of safety. She testified remotely before the Senate
Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection and got a bipartisan
grilling over what the company knew, and when, about Instagram's
effects on teenagers' mental health.

Republicans also slammed the company for not doing more to address
the many risks identified by its own researchers and employees and
exposed in a Wall Street Journal series.

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Facebook Calls Links To Depression Inconclusive. These Researchers
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"This is your company's reporting. You knew this was there. You knew
it was there, but you didn't do anything about it," said Sen. Marsha
Blackburn, R-Tenn., the subcommittee's ranking member, referring to
internal documents about the prevalence of sex trafficking on
Facebook.

On Monday, the company announced it was "pausing" work on Instagram
Kids, a platform intended for users under 13. That was not enough,
the lawmakers told Davis at the hearing. They pressed her to commit
Facebook to broader changes, including making its research public and
agreeing not to launch any products for children under 13 with
features that quantify popularity such as "likes" and follower
counts. They also called for new regulations on privacy and
protecting children's safety online.

Facebook vows not to retaliate against whistleblower for Senate
appearance

Criticism of Facebook has escalated in recent weeks since The Wall
Street Journal published a series of articles based on a trove of
internal research and communications leaked by a company
whistleblower.

Among the findings: One in three teenage girls said Instagram makes
their body image issues worse. A small number of teens even traced
their suicidal thoughts directly to the app.

Parents To Facebook: Don't Make A Kid-Only Instagram, Just A Better
Instagram

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Parents To Facebook: Don't Make A Kid-Only Instagram, Just A Better
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On Thursday, Davis said that "we strongly disagree with how this
reporting characterized our work" and that the research "showed that
many teens say that Instagram is helping them with hard issues that
are so common to being a teen."

She said Facebook takes "the privacy, safety and well-being of all
those who use our platform very seriously, especially the youngest
people on our services." The company conducts this sort of research,
she said, "to make our platform better, to minimize the bad and
maximize the good, and to proactively identify where we can improve."

Facebook made some of the research about Instagram and teens public
late Wednesday, with heavy annotations that downplayed and cast doubt
on some of the findings. Senators on Thursday accused the company of
"cherry-picking" its data.

Davis said Facebook is working to release more documents, with
appropriate protections for privacy. But she also dismissed their
impact, saying, "I want to be clear: This research is not a
bombshell."

Instagram Debuts New Safety Settings For Teenagers

Technology

Instagram Debuts New Safety Settings For Teenagers

"I beg to differ with you, Ms. Davis. This research is a bombshell,"
Blumenthal retorted. "It is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence
that Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children
and that it has concealed those facts and findings."

The same subcommittee is slated to hear on Tuesday from a Facebook
whistleblower who has turned over documents to Congress, Blumenthal
said. He pressed Davis to commit that Facebook will not pursue legal
action against the whistleblower.

"We've committed to not retaliating for this individual speaking to
the Senate," she said.

As Facebook defends work on tweens, Zuckerberg hopes to change
subject to the metaverse

Even as Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged Monday that the
company would suspend plans to build a version of Instagram for kids
ages 10 to 12, he doubled down on Facebook's commitment to the idea.

"I still firmly believe that it's a good thing to build a version of
Instagram that's designed to be safe for tweens," he told NBC's Today
show.

The aggressive stance the company is taking against the
whistleblower's revelations and public criticism illustrate how its
strategy in crisis has shifted away from apologizing.

"Facebook's brand is bad, and I think Facebook, you know, would
freely admit that," said Katie Harbath, a former public policy
director at the company. "But, you know, nobody else is gonna come
and defend the company besides themselves."

Facebook doesn't want to just play defense. It also wants to turn the
page -- to Silicon Valley's latest favorite buzzword: the metaverse.
That's an ambitious effort, drawn from science fiction, to move more
of what we do every day in the physical world into a shared digital
world.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it's Facebook's future.

"In this next chapter of our company, I think we will effectively
transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media
company to being a metaverse company," he told tech journalist Casey
Newton this summer.

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But critics say, before Facebook creates a new digital world, it
needs to fix its current social network.

"They've been able to weather these storms over and over again," said
Yael Eisenstat, who worked at Facebook on elections integrity for
political advertising in 2018.

"What I think is different this time is that I don't think they're
fully understanding that internal employees have questions now."

Editor's note: Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters.

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