Instagram Makes Teen Girls Hate Themselves. Is That a Bug or a Feature?

The features within Instagram that cause teenage girls to develop negative feelings about their body image may be baked into the very core of the platform, researchers and former employees have said in the wake of new revelations that the company did not disclose what it knew about its impact on young users. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has known for years that the platform is harmful to the mental health of many teenagers—particularly girls—but has kept internal research about the issue private, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Tuesday. In response to the Journal report, a bipartisan group of Senators said they would launch an investigation into what Facebook knew about Instagram’s effect on teenage users. Instagram said it was proud of the research, and that it is constantly improving how its app works to protect users from harm.

But researchers and former Facebook employees say Instagram’s problems may be inherent to the platform and therefore almost impossible to fix. “I think because Instagram is based on images, it is difficult to not make it an appearance-focused environment,” said Jasmine Fardouly, a research fellow at the University of New South Wales in Australia focused on social media’s impact on body image. “We may be able to reduce harm, but there will always be some ways that Instagram is harmful.” Some also point out that Facebook’s interests as a company often conflict with the safety of its users. “We have to acknowledge the broader point that Instagram and other social media apps are designed to keep people using them for as many hours as possible, because that’s how they make the most money,” says Jean Twenge, author of iGen, a book about the first generation who grew up with smartphones and social media. “That means you’re going to have a collision between what’s good for mental health and what’s good for profit.”