> SOMEWHERE IN META’S servers sat a slide deck marked “Confidential”. Written in 2019, its conclusion was blunt: “Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to.”

Found this document:

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/04/29/stop-big-...

Headlines (quote):

Instagram is an inevitable and unavoidable component of teens lives. Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to.

Instagram has become the ID card of this generation. It is the go-to tool for both measuring and gathering social prestige.

Instagram sets the standards not only for how teens should look and act but also for how they should think and feel.

Teens feel themselves to be at the forefront of new social behaviours to which there is no consensus on how to behave or cope. They sorely lack empathetic voices to whom they can turn for support.

Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addicts narrative’ spending too much time indulging in a compulsive behaviour that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.

The pressure to ‘be present and perfect’ is a defining characteristic of the anxiety teens face around Instagram. This restricts both their ability to be emotionally honest and also to create space for themselves to switch off.

Anxiety around what to post and the potential cost involved in posting the wrong thing means teens are switching from proactive to passive engagement with the platform.

Kinda sounds like the older generations have abandoned them, and now they settle for IG.