A Senator’s Office Creates a Fake Account to See Instagram’s Impact on Teenagers
At the end of September, Senator Richard Blumenthal’s office decided to conduct an experiment to see how social media impacts young individuals. They created a fake Instagram account of a 13-year-old girl and explored the content that was being presented to her. They looked into the accounts of real individuals of a similar age, and the potential effects all published posts could have on teenagers.
The Potential Effects Instagram Has On Young Individuals
Richard Blumenthal’s office wanted to explore the potential impact Instagram has on young individuals. For this purpose, they created an account pretending to be a 13-year old girl. The team investigated the content, the other accounts, and the comments. Their sole mission was to see how social media could affect teenagers’ mental health. According to a number of surveys, social media can be extremely detrimental when it comes to mental state. The reason being is that social media gives off an unrealistic expectation of how someone’s life should be like. Additionally, the majority of people using Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms share the best parts of their daily routines.
To explore how Instagram affects minors, Richard Blumenthal’s office decided to explore the virtual world through a 13-year old’s perspective. A short period of time was absolutely enough for the participants to see how bad the famous social media platform can be for a teenager. A woman’s body image was the first problematic topic that was discussed. According to the office, Instagram is a platform that contains an immense amount of content that can seriously harm one’s self-esteem. Quite often, such pictures and videos trigger younger people to develop different types of eating disorders. What’s more, Blumenthal also shared that soon after the creation of the account, numerous eating disorder accounts were suggested to the new user.
Further Problems Teenagers Experience Because of Social Media
As reported by the senator, Instagram hides a number of further potential risks that are likely to interfere with a younger person’s mental health. A great number of girls share that they suffer from depression and low self-esteem due to the content that’s shared on platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.
They say that there are moments when they don’t feel good about themselves and, more precisely, about their bodies, and the moment they open Instagram, they feel even worse afterward. In addition, according to prior research, social media can seriously affect someone’s memory and concentration. For students, Instagram is seen as an app where they can take some time off from studying. Sadly, however, the platform turns out to be nothing more than a distraction.
Younger people with depression reveal that social media surely has an impact on their mental state. Girls and boys suffering from different eating disorders also share that Instagram can surely decrease their confidence in a matter of minutes. In such cases, it’s advisable to unfollow all accounts that may cause such problems. All things considered, we can say that using Instagram has several disadvantages, such as:
- Loss of concentration
- Low self-esteem due to contact comparison with others
- Risk of developing an eating disorder
- A high risk of falling into depression
The Response
After the conducted research, Instagram’s spokesperson provided a response concerning the survey. Antigone Davis, who is the Global Head of Safety at Facebook, said that the company disagrees with all the accusations. As most of you know, Facebook owns Instagram, and multitudinous individuals believe that Instagram is much more detrimental when it comes to mentality than Facebook. Davis said that a large percentage of users find Instagram to be a place where they can motivate themselves and help each other do better. She stated that the company will probably put an end to the tendency of creating fake Instagram accounts. On the other hand, the Israeli businessman Adam Mosseri, who is currently the head of Instagram, revealed another project that’s still in process.
As claimed by him, the company is currently working on a new platform that will be specially designed for individuals under the age of 12, and it will be called Instagram Kids. Experts believe that this will surely be beneficial considering how well aware of technology kids are nowadays. The disadvantage of children using social media is mainly associated with the fact that there are many trolls online, who can easily take advantage of minors.
There are numerous cases when children share their personal data with unknown individuals. Instagram Kids will potentially be a better, safer, and more amusing virtual space for kids. Although the project is on pause at the moment, it will most likely be launched in the near future.
In addition, Mosseri also said that he strives to make Instagram a place where everyone can feel good about themselves. For this purpose, the photo-sharing platform may soon release separate features with respect to body image that will help boys and girls to spend their spare time in a stress-free online environment.
Final Thoughts
It’s an undeniable fact that social media is part of most people’s everyday life. Nevertheless, individuals, especially teenagers, should not allow themselves to be affected by the content available there. In case of mental problems caused by Instagram, juveniles are advised to detach themselves from the platform and focus their attention somewhere else.