Instagram impacts teen mental health in the West. What about everywhere else?

In September, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report on the impact of Instagram on the mental health of teenagers, based on a cache of leaked documents that would come to be known as the Facebook Papers. The report suggested that Facebook had downplayed its own research, which indicated that certain subsections of teenagers on Instagram said their body image issues or depression were sometimes exacerbated by using the app. The Wall Street Journal story sparked a broad conversation about the role of the platform in mediating teenage mental health.

But the report largely excluded the experiences of teenagers like Sonali, who live outside the U.S. and U.K and constitute the vast majority of teenagers who use Instagram today. That’s because the bulk of research cited by the Wall Street Journal exclusively focused on teenagers in the U.S. and U.K. Behavioral scientists and mental health advocates told Rest of World that the apparent dearth of Facebook research on Instagram’s impact on teenagers outside the West echoes deeper Western biases and knowledge gaps in the current scholarship. Facebook did not respond to multiple requests for comment about its research on the topic of mental health among teenagers in the Global South. 

A review by Rest of World of over a dozen outside scholarly papers on teenage mental health and Instagram use in the Global South suggests that cultural factors and socioeconomic conditions may shape the experiences of teenagers using the platform, but there remains a pressing need for further research.

Urvashi shares her perspective with Nilesh Christopher and Andrew Deck of rest of world:

Urvashi Aneja, director of the Digital Futures Lab in India, a tech policy research organisation, highlights that the wider public still often sees platforms like Instagram in the Global South through the lens of micro-entrepreneurship and opportunities for youth, rather than as points of concern from a mental health standpoint.

Mainstream media coverage of Instagram in India hasn’t evolved beyond the promise of social mobility and the jaw-dropping amount of money influencers can make, Aneja said. Even recognition of the challenges that come with social media success isn’t acknowledged. The conversation “hasn’t kind of tipped over to mental health,” said Aneja, whose team is authoring a paper on the rise of the Indian influencer industry.

Read the full piece here.