According to CNBC, Instagram reached the new milestone barely three years after reaching the one billion mark in June of 2018, a figure that took the site eight years to collect. Unfortunately, the corporation has not released precise user counts in its financials since the announcement of those figures. Instagram has been anxiously working hard to keep up with TikTok, the fast-growing short-form video platform that just surpassed 1 billion users just three years after merging with Musicaly and becoming publicly available. While Instagram continues to outperform the platform, it’s uncertain how long this will continue. Meta-owned Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified for the first time last week at a US Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., defending the platform’s effects on teens, saying that the photo-sharing platform “quite frankly wasn’t designed” for people aged 13 to 17. The hearing was called after internal Meta research was leaked, revealing that the photo-sharing app could be harmful to its young users. Last week, the Meta-owned photo-sharing network added a ‘Take a Break’ feature as well as other safety features for teenagers. As criticism over the damaging impact these platforms have on children’s minds grows, a global alliance of researchers has called on Meta to be more upfront and serious about the mental health of child and adolescent users on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
