Internal Facebook documents have revealed that top executives know that Instagram is toxic for young girls. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739

This comes as no surprise to me, mainly because Instagram is known for causing or exacerbating eating disorders in this demographic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440477/ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47637377

On Instagram, you have access to an endless array of influencers, models, and e-girls displaying their bodies - bodies which are both altered through plastic surgery and through Photoshop and other forms of digital manipulation. This results in the creation of 'impossible bodies': those that are unrealistic for young girls to emulate.

And it's not just the bodies, either. New Yorker Writer Jia Tolentino has written about this at length. She calls it 'instagram face'- “the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face. It’s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. The face is distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic...”

“We’re talking an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern." https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-of-instagram-face

This is what young girls are subject to, is it any wonder they buckle under the pressure?

Cover image from https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/annahaines/2021/04/27/from-instagram-face-to-snapchat-dysmorphia-how-beauty-filters-are-changing-the-way-we-see-ourselves/amp/