‘Facebook is seriously affecting young people’s mental health’
Frances Haugen, a former official who made serious allegations against Facebook, appeared before a special committee of the US Senate.
Frances Haugen told the committee that Facebook was creating divisions in society by harming children and democratic values.
She blamed Instagram, a photo and video sharing application owned by Facebook, and said that according to Facebook’s own research, the app was seriously affecting the mental health of young people.
According to Haugen, research has shown that 13% of girls under the age of 20 say that using Instagram leads them to suicidal thoughts and stressed about their size and weight.
The former official blamed Facebook’s management for all this, saying that Facebook knows how to secure the platform but is reluctant to do so for profit.
Frances Haugen also said in a statement to the committee that Facebook puts business interests ahead of public interests.
On the other hand, Facebook has expressed dissatisfaction with Frances Haugen’s statement, saying that the company is not aware of the topics she is discussing.
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Earlier in May, the ratings of Facebook application on App Store of iPhone declined from 4.0 to 2.1 and on Google Play Store of android system to 2.4 amid Israeli military raids in Palestine.
People from all around the world have joined hands together to teach the company a lesson for its alleged favour towards Israel and restrictions on posts exposing Israeli terrorism.
Scores of users accused the company of siding with Israel as their content in favour of Palestinians were deleted. The reviews section shows that people have expressed anger over unnecessary ads as well along with other concerns.
Also, a page with the name of Jerusalem also surfaced on the social media platform which showed that it was mostly liked by people without their will. No official statement related to the page or decrease in the social media platform’s rating has been issued by Facebook till filing of the report.
