The relationship between social media and self-image: Instagram and the under 13 version

Since its acquisition by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has grown to one billion monthly users, generating $ 20 billion in advertising revenue each year. But its growth coincided with the worsening of a series of problems partly linked to the very nature of the app, on the other hand to its loss of autonomy, which made it less and less a “company within society” than a department. of Facebook. It is therefore treated as such, to the point of keeping negative data hidden so as not to lose that slice of the public – the youngest – who are abandoning Facebook en masse. Over the years, Instagram has been used by Facebook to fight its battles. Against Snapchat, introducing stories (a success with the public) against TikTok, with reels (a decent failure). And even if the purely photographic nature of Instagram has sheltered it from the political controversies that have hit Facebook and Twitter, the hunger for advertising has created a more or less clear world of influencers. It is now impossible to escape the siege of advertising and sponsored posts when using the app. Because Instagram is based on images, that’s where the problems lie. The tendency to share only the best moments, the best shots, the most perfect bodies, can create problems for those who are not equipped to escape merciless comparisons. For years, interest groups and activists have had Instagram and Facebook in their sights for their lack of control and even the promotion of harmful content, particularly against the very young. Over the past three years, internal Facebook research, now unveiled by the Wall Street Journal, has shown the dangers of Instagram to the mental health of teenage girls. According to research, at least one in three girls have revealed that they have developed disturbances in the perception of their body linked to the use of Instagram, and many have admitted that the use of social media caused distress and an increase in depressive tendencies. As it emerged from company presentations for internal use “32% of teenagers said that when they felt insecure about their body, Instagram made them feel worse” and again “We worsened a girl’s self-image out of three “. Merciless and realistic reports, which do not try to sweeten the pill by placing blame on competitors. “The comparison is worse on Instagram,” it reads, as TikTok is “connected to performance” and Snapchat is “protected from the use of playful filters.” Karina Newton, head of Instagram’s public relations, explained in a post that new ways are being studied to encourage users not to fall into unhealthy fixations: “We are exploring ways to entice users to explore different topics, proposing contents that are inspiring and comforting, and we are optimistic that this can help change that part of the Instagram culture that is too focused on the exterior ”. But the damage to the image is serious, especially if we think that, while Facebook was acquiring data on the damage caused by Instagram to the mental health of adolescents, it was simultaneously studying the proposal to activate a version aimed at children under 13.