On Tuesday, a former Meta engineer testified before members of the U.S. Senate about how the company is not doing enough to protect children from sexual harassment online.
The whistleblower, Arturo Béjar, made the remarks in a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. The hearing focused on how social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, have contributed to the teen mental health crisis.
Béjar worked for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, from 2009 to 2015, and again from 2019 to 2021. His first few years at the company, Béjar worked to combat cyberbullying. After he left the company for the first time, his daughter started using Instagram.
“I appear before you today as a dad with firsthand experience of a child who received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram,” Béjar explained. “She and her friends began having awful experiences, including repeated unwanted sexual advances, harassment.”
“She reported these incidents to the company, and it did nothing,” he added.
Béjar returned to Meta in 2019 to work on Instagram’s “wellbeing” team. Béjar explained that in a study, one in eight children ages 13 to 15 years old experienced unwanted sexual advances in the last seven days.
“Meta knows the harm kids experience on their platform and executives know that their measures fail to address it,” Béjar said. “They are deciding time and time again to not tackle these issues. Instagram is the largest directory of teenagers, with pictures, in the history of the world. Meta, which owns Instagram, is a company where all work is driven by data, but it has been unwilling to be transparent about the harm that kids experience and unwilling to reduce them.”
“Social media companies must be required to become more transparent, so that parents and public can hold them accountable,” he added.
It takes tremendous bravery to speak truth to power.
— Senate Judiciary Committee (@JudiciaryDems) November 7, 2023
When Arturo Béjar blew the whistle on Instagram harming children, Mark Zuckerberg ignored him.
We won’t. Thank you for testifying today. https://t.co/luPmotccVC
On X, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that Big Tech “failed to police itself” and that Congress would step in to pass legislation protecting children.
We’ve advanced six bipartisan bills to protect kids online in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) November 7, 2023
Big Tech has woefully failed to police itself.
Congress is stepping in.
In the hearing, Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said Béjar brought something before the Senate committee that “every parent needs to hear.”
The issue of social media’s impact on teens’ mental health has been ongoing. In 2021, Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, clashed with senators in a congressional hearing over the social media platform’s dangers and negative impact on young users, which Townhall covered. In the hearing, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) revealed that his office created a fake Instagram account posing as a 13-year-old girl. After the fictional “13-year-old-girl” followed a female celebrity, the content recommended by the app “went dark fast.”
“It changed and it went dark fast,” Lee said in the hearing, saying the app began suggesting content “that promotes body dysmorphia” and the “sexualization of women.”
Additionally Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) said she felt “frustrated,” with Instagram, as parents “continue to hear from you [Instagram] that change is coming, that things [on Instagram] are going to be different.”
“Guess what? Nothing changes. Nothing,” she said.