Yesterday, in a surprise move, announced goal that would end third-party data verification from their Facebook and Instagram platforms in the US.
Many experts have expressed concern about the potential harm this may have for users. Particularly in relation to the expected increase in misinformation and harmful content that will appear on the two platforms as a result.
But what will be the impact on mental health? Especially for vulnerable users like teenagers and young people?
Why are people worried?
With the rise of misinformation, AI-generated content and deepfakes, many are concerned that without fact-checking, vulnerable people are at risk of being manipulated or exposed to harmful content.
Bad actors who are incentivized to spread false or misleading information will now find it easier to do so in the United States, both on Facebook and Instagram.
Additionally, Meta is also removing content restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender. Which means there is the potential for abusive or stigmatizing content to appear that may target already vulnerable groups and minorities.
Viewing harmful content can lead to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and even trauma. In December last year, content moderators in Kenya filed a lawsuit against Meta. As reported in the guardianThe lawsuit alleges that 140 content moderators had been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content, including murders, suicides and child abuse.
What does the research say?
Last year, MQ published a report in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, the Harvard Digital Psychiatry Institute and researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute. This report is a comprehensive review of existing research on the effects of gaming, social media use, and other Internet uses on mental health.
The authors found that it is not so much the amount of time young people spend online that determines their mental health outcomes, but rather the experiences they have online.
If children and young people have negative experiences on social media, for example cyber bullying, receiving unwanted contact from strangers and viewing unwanted content such as pornography or violent content; then this can negatively affect your mental health.
Conversely, if the online experience is positive, for example, increased social connectivity, access to peer support, mental health resources, and access to accurate information; so this can have a beneficial impact.
“More than half of young people say they are online ‘almost all the time’ and using the Internet is simply part of their world.” Juan Toro Director DigitalPsychiatry.org, Harvard Medical School
So what has to happen now?
In short, more research needs to be done to understand how these Goal changes will affect people’s mental health.
The authors of the MQ report noted that more research was already needed, even before these Meta changes, to truly understand the full impact that social media use, misinformation and harmful content can have. They found that few existing studies have studied the impact of accessing harmful content over long periods of time, with most focusing on short-term effects.
They also found that most observational studies that attribute the rise in mental health conditions in young people to the Internet or social media do not control for other factors such as economic circumstances or existing health conditions.
