Instagram CEO to testify before Senate committee on safety of teen users
CBSN
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri will discuss steps the popular photo sharing app is taking to keep teenage users safe on the platform during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for Meta, the new name for the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
The testimony, Mosseri's first before a Senate panel that is investigating the negative impacts of Instagram on teens, comes after damaging internal reports published in The Wall Street Journal showed that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which also owns Instagram, knew the platform was harmful for some teenage girls.
An internal company research project from 2019 revealed that Instagram makes body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls. Another from March of 2020 showed that 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made it worse. Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users attributed the feeling to Instagram, another internal presentation showed.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.