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What Leaked Internal Documents Reveal About the Damage Facebook Has Caused (Fresh Air Interview)

Sep 2021 🇺🇸 NPR (Fresh Air)

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In this September 23, 2021 Fresh Air interview, Terry Gross talks with Jeff Horwitz days after his Facebook Files series ran, in his own words rather than through the articles. Horwitz describes internal research in which the company's own staff associated Instagram with worsened body image for a share of teen girls — including a presentation to executives stating the platform made body-image issues worse for one in three teen girls reporting the issue — and internal findings in which some teen users who reported thoughts of self-harm traced those feelings to their Instagram experience. These are company-attributed associations from leaked research, not independent clinical findings. Horwitz also describes Facebook's public response, which characterized the research as small-effect and inconclusive. TechKids Foundation cites this as the lead reporter's own long-form account of what the leaked documents did and did not show.

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Gross, Terry (host). 'What Leaked Internal Documents Reveal About the Damage Facebook Has Caused.' Fresh Air, NPR, September 23, 2021.

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Nov 2022 🇨🇦 The Paul Wells Show / Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
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