Written Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law
Arturo Béjar, a former Facebook engineering director who ran the company's Protect & Care safety team from 2009–2015 and later consulted for Instagram's well-being group, submitted written testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. He described an internal 2021 survey he sent to Meta's top leadership, including Mark Zuckerberg, showing that a large share of Instagram users aged 13–15 reported unwanted sexual advances and bullying in a typical week, while very few of those reports led the company to remove anything. Béjar testified that leadership did not act on the findings and that his own daughter had faced similar unwanted contact with no way to flag it. He argued that outside regulators, not voluntary company action, are needed to require platforms to measure and publicly report teen-reported harms.
Béjar's internal Instagram survey found 51% of users reported a negative experience on the platform in a given week, but only 1% of those reported the offending content and just 2% of those reports led to removal, per his testimony.
Revised internal survey data he cited to Meta leadership found about 13% of Instagram users aged 13–15 reported receiving unwanted sexual advances on the platform in the prior seven days.
Redesigned in-app support flows built by his earlier Facebook team raised the share of 13–14-year-olds completing a help flow from about 11% to about 82%, he testified.
Bejar, Arturo. Written Testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, hearing on 'Social Media and the Teen Mental Health Crisis.' November 7, 2023.