The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation
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Starting in September 2021, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz led a multi-part investigation, published as a series of nine reports, built on a review of thousands of pages of internal Facebook (now Meta) documents. Coverage in the series described the company's own researchers linking heavy Instagram use to worsened body-image concerns, anxiety, and exposure to self-harm- and eating-disorder-related material for a share of teen girl users, alongside separate findings the reporting associated with a 2018 algorithm change and angrier engagement, and with weak enforcement against drug cartels, human traffickers, and vaccine misinformation. The series became known as the catalyst for Frances Haugen's later whistleblowing and congressional testimony. TechKids Foundation cites it as internal, company-generated research made public through Horwitz's reporting, not as a TechKids clinical or diagnostic claim.
A 2019 internal Instagram research slide obtained in the reporting stated the company's own researchers found it 'make[s] body image issues worse for one in three teen girls' who reported the issue — an internal figure, not an independent clinical measurement, cited consistently across multiple independent secondary accounts of the reporting.
Horwitz, Jeff, et al. 'The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation.' The Wall Street Journal, September 2021.