Teenage girls report posting pictures of their bodies… “Instagram” is struggling to maintain the “fuel line”

International media revealed a real problem facing the famous “Instagram” platform specialized in displaying images and short videos.

American documents confirmed that the application “Instagram”, which was considered in recent years as a “growth engine” for “Facebook”, is struggling to maintain its subscribers, especially adolescents and young adults.
In 2018, the number of “Instagram” users reached one billion users, in an achievement that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, described as “amazing”, as the application specialized in sharing photos and videos owned by “Facebook” was considered an engine of growth. The latter, especially for the younger generation.

A dangerous presence threat facing “Instagram”

But according to the article published in the “New York Times”, the application is currently facing what has been described as an “existential threat” due to the loss of teenage users of social media platforms, in particular.

According to the sources, the problem has become more pressing in the past year, as it was stated in internal “Instagram” documents obtained by the American newspaper that “if we lose our foothold with teenagers in the United States, we lose the fuel line” in allusion to the loss of its users.

“Instagram” targets “early high school”

According to the American newspaper, Instagram has not left its dangerous reality to chance, as it has allocated almost its entire annual global marketing budget since 2018, estimated at $390 million this year, solely to target teenagers.

Instagram relies largely on digital advertising, and marketers said the focus is singularly on a narrow age group is unusual, although the final ad spend has exceeded teens, parents and young adults.

Instagram documents, which have not been previously reported, reveal the company’s anxiety and fear, as it struggles behind the scenes to retain, engage and attract young users. She focused in particular on a category called “Early High School”, which was classified as 13 to 15-year-olds.

Teenage girls report having pictures of their bodies exposed for sharing

The documents confirm that “Facebook” is at great risk due to the protests of the Congress against its policies, as protests were also monitored from the public against “Instagram”, indicating the presence of bad effects on the mental health of users.

According to separate documents on Facebook wrongdoing provided by whistleblower Frances Hogan and published by the Wall Street Journal, Facebook was told that some teenage girls reported feeling bad about their body images when using Instagram.

One woman testified at a Senate hearing this month that she reported that Facebook intentionally provided and posted these images to everyone, including children, who came into contact with its services.