Mr. Biden said social media platforms must be held accountable for the consequences they have on the mental health of Americans, especially children.
In his State of the Union address on March 1, President Joe Biden said that Americans, especially young people, are going through a mental health crisis of which social media is one of the root causes. He vowed to "hold platforms accountable for for-profit child trials".
According to Vox, although he did not mention any specific names, Biden's target was none other than Meta, the corporation that operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Overturning the Facebook accusation
"It's time to strengthen privacy protections, ban ads that target children, ask tech companies to stop collecting personal data about our kids," the US president said.
When making his point about this, Mr. Biden mentioned a special guest, appearing below the audience: Frances Haugen. She is a former Facebook employee who publicly exposed her former company to the media and the US Congress.
From August 2021, Haugen shared a series of internal Facebook documents with the press, talking about how the Facebook and Instagram platforms cause depression and anxiety in many teenage girls.
She said Facebook prioritizes profits over user safety. They always keep shady from users and regulators about their actions.
"They hide behind walls that make it impossible for researchers and regulators to fully understand. We have to believe what Facebook says is true, but their actions don't deserve that blind faith," Haugen reported. Presented before the US Senate in October 2021.
An important detail mentioned by Haugen is that Facebook ignores their maliciousness. Internal documents show that Facebook has researched and found a link between the product and users' mental health problems. But when it found that Instagram made a third of young girls feel anxious about their self-image, Facebook ignored the results.