Mark Zuckerberg is hitting back at a major concern many consumers have about most social media apps, including his own platforms.
As consumers and lawmakers are starting to raise red flags about social media and the negative impact it can have on the declining mental health of young users, the billionaire CEO of Meta Platforms (META) revealed in a recent interview with The Verge that he believes that there is “no causal connection” between the two.
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“I think a lot of people take it as if it’s an assumed thing that there is some link,” said Zuckerberg during the interview. “I think the majority of the high-quality research out there suggests that there’s no causal connection at a broad scale between these things.”
He claims that as more research comes out about the lack of connection between social media and the mental health of young users, people may have a hard time accepting it.
“The academic research shows something that I think, to me, fits more with what I’ve seen of how the platforms operate,” said Zuckerberg. “But it’s counter to what a lot of people think, and I think that’s going to be a reckoning that we’ll have to have. Basically, as the majority of the high-quality academic research comes out, okay, can people accept this? I think that’s going to be a really important set of debates over the next few years.”
From right, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X Corp., and Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, testify during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” January 31, 2024.
Zuckerberg also revealed that the ability to receive push notifications on phones and “get distracted” appears to be a “much greater contributor to mental health issues than a lot of the specific apps.” He claims that apps are doing their part to create tools that parents can use to monitor their children’s social media use, and that there are things that “everyone should try to improve and work on.”
“You can play a role in trying to make something better even if the thing wasn’t caused by you in the first place,” said Zuckerberg. “There’s no doubt that being a parent is really hard. And there’s a big question of, in this internet age where we have phones, what are the right tools that parents need in order to be able to raise their kids? I think that we can play a role in giving people parental controls over the apps.”
Recent research challenges Mark Zuckerberg’s claims
While Zuckerberg claims that research suggests there is “no causal connection” between social media use and the mental health of youth, plenty of other studies state otherwise.
Recent data has found that social media use is indeed connected to the mental health of teenagers. According to a recent survey from Gallup, teenagers who spend more time on social media have reported poor mental health.
The survey found that 41% of teens who spent over five hours a day on social media reported having “poor/very poor overall mental health,” compared to the 23% of teens who only spend two hours a day on social media.
Teens in circle holding smart mobile phones.
Also, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory last year where he warned that an increasing amount of studies are showing that social media can have a negative impact on youth mental health.
“In addition to these recent studies, correlational research on associations between social media use and mental health has indicated reason for concern and further investigation,” Murthy said in his advisory. “These studies point to a higher relative concern of harm in adolescent girls and those already experiencing poor mental health, as well as for particular health outcomes like cyberbullying-related depression, body image and disordered eating behaviors, and poor sleep quality linked to social media use.”
Meta reveals new feature to protect children on its platforms
Meta, which owns the giant social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, has also recently been rolling out new tools to help protect minors’ mental health on its apps.
On Sept. 17, Meta rolled out a new feature for Instagram that automatically puts new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts,” which consists of “built-in protections” that limit who they can contact and what they see on the platform.
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Some of these protections also include “time limit reminders” that instruct teens to leave the app after spending 60 minutes on it each day. The account also has a sleep mode that will “mute notifications overnight and send auto-replies to DMs.”
Also, these settings can only be adjusted by users at or above the age of 16.
Zuckerberg has apologized to parents whose kids were exploited on his apps
Zuckerberg’s comments come after Meta and other social media companies testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January, where lawmakers raised concerns about the threat their platforms pose to children who use them. Some of those threats include bullying, social media addiction, sexual exploitation, unrealistic beauty standards, etc.
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“They’re responsible for many of the dangers our children face online,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the committee, during the hearing. “Their design choices, their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety, their constant pursuit of engagement and profit over basic safety have all put our kids and grandkids at risk.”
Zuckerberg also apologized to parents at the hearing who claimed that his social media platforms exploited their children.
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered,’ he said. He also added that Meta continues to invest and work on “industry-leading efforts” to keep children safe.
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