Facebook Downplays Internal Research Released on Eve of Hearing

The social network published its findings about Instagram’s effect on young users, as senators prepared to question an executive on Thursday.

Facebook on Wednesday published two internal research reports about its photo-sharing app, Instagram, and downplayed their conclusions, as the company prepared for two congressional hearings in the next week that are focused on its products’ effects on children’s mental health.

The reports — “Teen Mental Health Deep Dive,” published internally in October 2019, and “Hard Life Moments,” published in November 2019 — were accompanied by annotations from Facebook that sought to contextualize the limitations of the research and chastised its own researchers for using imprecise language.

In one slide, with a title that said “one in five teens say that Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves, with UK girls the most negative,” Facebook wrote in its annotation that the research had not been intended to suggest a causal link between the app and well-being. The company said the headline emphasized negative effects but could have been written “to note the positive or neutral effect of Instagram on users.”