Child advocacy group Fairplay issued the report Thursday, examining 90,000 accounts accused of promoting eating disorders in a "bubble." Accounts in the bubble have around 500,000 followers, with a median age of 19; one-third are underage.
"Meta’s pro-eating disorder bubble is not an isolated incident nor an awful accident," the report reads. "Rather it is an example of how, without appropriate checks and balances, Meta systematically puts profit ahead of young people’s safety and wellbeing."
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The report estimated that influencers in the bubble rake in about $2 million annually for Meta. Revenue collected by all members of the bubble is roughly $227.9 million a year.
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"Some researchers argue that we need more evidence to understand social media’s impact on people," Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg has written previously. "Each study has limitations and caveats, so no single study is going to be conclusive." Clegg linked to an article titled "Why scientists don't actually know if social media is bad for you" in his statement.
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"The technology sector has proven that it is unable or unwilling to prioritize children’s welfare and so the time has come for our state, federal and international regulators to step in," Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley professor in the School of Information, wrote in the report's foreword.
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Farid pointed to legislation in California that would force Big Tech to "consider the privacy and protection of children in the design of any digital product or service that children in California are likely to access." It was introduced in February of this year.
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Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn also presented a bill the same month to demand "platforms to make safety the default and to give kids and parents tools to help prevent the destructive impact of social media."
Instagram’s terms and conditions state that a user must be at least 13 years old to create an account. The platform relies on children "self-declaring" their age when they sign up and there are few subsequent checks to ensure that young people under 13 years are not on the platform. There is much evidence to suggest that young people under 13 years old join the platform, with a 2020 survey finding that 40% of 9-12-year-olds use the platform at least once a day.
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Instagram’s algorithm extended the reach of the underage pro-eating disorder bubble equally. Together, the minors within this bubble had 760K followers. If 69.96% of these are unique, that is over half a million users worldwide who follow children from within Instagram’s pro-eating disorder bubble.
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