The shocking decline of two happy teenage girls after obsessing over their weight and calorie intake is revealed in new photos today as their mothers are suing Instagram, claiming the app drove them to starve themselves and in one case to attempt suicide.
Kentucky moms Candace Wuest and Alexandra Martin are suing Instagram’s parent company Meta in separate lawsuits filed Monday.
They claim the app targeted their daughters — and millions of other at-risk girls — with reduced-calorie recipes, photos of skeletal models and a fatal algorithm that propelled both to the top of girls’ feeds.
In the case of Wuest’s daughter, she attempted suicide after writing letters about the crippling societal pressures to be thin and beautiful.
Her cases are the latest in a growing body of damning examples of how the app is damaging the mental health of young people, particularly impressionable teenage girls.
This 12-year-old Kentucky girl, identified as CN in court documents, became obsessed with reduced-calorie dieting on Instagram. She lost an amazing amount of weight in a single year and then tried to kill herself
Alex Martin, another Kentucky girl, was so obsessed with being skinny that she lost 20 pounds in three months. She is shown on the right in her lightest form after using Instagram for three months
Wuest’s daughter is only named as CN in the lawsuit. It details how they began browsing Instagram for recipes together in 2017, when CN was 12.
“In the beginning, CN used Instagram to communicate with her mother and find recipes. She frequently sent Candace recipes for exciting new foods – usually sweets – which they often prepared together. CN loved looking for new recipes.
“After a while, however, she stopped sending prescriptions and dealt with the idea that she had to be slim.
“By sixth grade, the prescriptions stopped entirely,” the lawsuit says.
Soon, the 12-year-old was in groups where people shared tips on avoiding food.
Her daughter’s Instagram page was then “flooded with pictures of overly skinny models, focusing on thigh gaps, bridge gaps and collarbone bones.”
One of the diets the first girl took on in 2017 after being targeted with recipes
While suffering from the eating disorder, the Wuests’ daughter wrote this sad note about how society gave her a crippling need to be skinny
The kid represented the pressure she felt to stay thin in drawings like this one
The Wuest family applied for treatment for their daughter in 2018. She is seen above with her younger brother in a photo provided by the family in their lawsuit
“These aren’t terms CN searched for, but content that Meta’s recommendation system sent to them.
“CN opened their Explore page and the content was just there, in overwhelming amounts,” the lawsuit alleges.
Her daughter’s Instagram page was then flooded with images of overly skinny models, focusing on thigh gaps, bridge gaps and collarbone bones
“Meta’s social media product has pushed 12-year-old CN down a dangerous rabbit hole, whose design flaws Meta had full knowledge of but could not correct, based on findings that those design flaws were more profitable for Meta if fixed in place.” stayed,” the girl says the mother’s lawyer.
At the beginning of seventh grade, CN joined her school’s swim team.
Her mother describes how she thought swimming burned the most calories, which is why she chose it as a sport.
As swim season ended, she took to Instagram for tips on keeping the weight off.
Alex Martin also received help and is at a healthier weight. She is shown with her family
“Around the same time, Instagram’s algorithms and related technologies began distributing extreme exercise content and recommending user groups—which she subsequently joined—focused on extreme exercise and eating disorders
“Meta sent CN recommendations to eating disorder topic sites and groups. Meta also sent CN recommendations for “friends” who were actually adult Instagram users who either suffered from these mental health issues themselves or used the Instagram product to find and exploit young girls; and likewise, Meta CN recommended the same types of adult users who then attempted to contact her,” the lawsuit reads.
Alexandra’s parents claim that she was perfectly happy with her figure until she started using the app, but that she quickly lost 20 pounds after shuffling pictures of statuesque models in front of her every day.
Her allegations against Instagram reinforce the widely held view that the app is bad for young girls’ health.
A Facebook whistleblower admitted this last year.