Syed Saif Ul Hassan 
Oct 21, 2025
Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Instagram logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. — Reuters
As the rise of social media seems to have led to more insecurities related to physique, an internal Meta study has found that teens who frequently feel bad about their bodies after using Instagram are shown significantly more harmful content than those who don’t.
The study surveyed over 1,100 teens during the 2023-24 school year and examined the content they were shown over a period of three months, Reuters reported after reviewing the report.
Out of the 223 teens who reported regular body dissatisfaction, 10.5% of the posts they saw were considered eating disorder-adjacent, featuring highly edited bodies, explicit body judgements, or references to disordered eating.
In contrast, teens without such negative feelings encountered only 3.3% of this sort of content.
Researchers also noted that these vulnerable teens were exposed to more mature or disturbing content-including violence, risky behaviour, and suffering-making up 27% of their feed versus 13.6% for others.
Although the platform doesn’t directly ban such content, experts, parents, and Meta's own advisors have warned that it may harm teen mental health.
The Facebook parent company acknowledged its screening tools failed to detect 98.5% of this sensitive material.
While researchers verify that Instagram caused such negative feelings, they found a clear association between exposure to fitness, beauty, and provocative posts and lower body image.
These findings reflect the company’s commitment to improving teen safety. Meta has since pledged to reduce age-restricted content and align content for teens with PG-13 standards, a Meta spokesperson remarked.
Health experts are of the view that the study shows Instagram’s algorithm may amplify vulnerabilities, feeding teens more content that intensifies body image struggles.
