Facebook Has Ability to Let Advertisers Know When Teens Feel ‘Worthless.’ What Are the Implications?
Facebook is facing backlash after leaked documents from the social media giant revealed it has the capability to target teenagers when they feel “insecure” and “worthless” and “need a confidence boost.”
The internal report, which was produced by the company’s executives and obtained by theAustralian, says that Facebook can monitor posts and photos in real time to determine when young people feel “stressed,” “defeated,” “overwhelmed,” “anxious,” “nervous,” “stupid,” “silly,” “useless,” and a “failure.” The document also contained information about when teens are more likely to feel excited and thoughtful, among other emotions. “Monday-Thursday is about building confidence; the weekend is for broadcasting achievements,” the document said, per the Australian.
Facebook quickly apologized and told the Australian that it will conduct an investigation regarding the documents. The company also admitted it was inappropriate to target youth this way. However, Facebook said in a statement that “the data on which this research is based was aggregated and presented consistent with applicable privacy and legal protections, including the removal of any personally identifiable information.”
But Facebook released a second statement on Monday that called the Australian article “misleading,” adding that Facebook does not “offer tools to target people based on their emotional state.”
The company statement continued: “The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook. It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated.”
The Guardian was given access to an internal Facebook message thread in which a Facebook Australia executive brushed off the report and criticized the reporter who broke the story, saying it was “written by a journalist who writes inflammatory articles … every Monday.”
A Facebook spokesperson tells Yahoo Beauty that while the company does receive requests from advertisers to conduct research, it has a process in place to review the type of research it performs. “In this case that process was not followed,” says the spokesperson, who also noted that the research involved only people in Australia and New Zealand and was never used to target ads.
While Facebook says it’s not actually using this technology, the implications of it are huge. Adam Alter, PhD, an associate professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business and author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked and Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave, tells Yahoo Beauty that this type of information is potentially “very valuable” to advertisers. “Targeting the right online users is very difficult — typical click-through and purchasing rates are well below 1 percent — so any tool that allows you to target more effectively could have a massive effect on profit generation,” Alter says. “If you raise purchase rates from, say, 0.1 percent of all users to 0.2 percent of all users, you’ll double your revenue.”
Saleem Alhabash, PhD, an assistant professor of public relations and social media at Michigan State University, agrees, telling Yahoo Beauty that this kind of technology has the potential to be more effective at targeting people than self-reported measures, like surveys, which are subject to dishonesty. “From an advertising/marketing perspective, knowing the emotional state the consumers are experiencing is essential to learning more about them, but more importantly, it is critical for making sense of which type of messages and appeals might be effective when consumers are experiencing such emotions,” he says.
For example, Alhabash says, if a consumer is feeling happy and confident, a message that highlights these emotions would work better than one that capitalizes on feelings of anxiety and distress. “Matching the consumers’ emotional states with message appeals is a foundational principle of advertising,” he notes.
Of course, there are ethical concerns. “First and foremost, you’re targeting children, and we have different rules about what’s fair and foul when targeting kids vs. adults with advertising,” Mark Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law and author of the book Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing, tells Yahoo Beauty. The Facebook document also highlighted negative, fragile emotions, which Bartholomew says is “crossing a line between trying to persuade people and manipulating them — that raises grave ethical concerns.”
Joseph Turow, PhD, associate dean for graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication and author of The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power, tells Yahoo Beauty that it’s unclear whether companies are using technology like this yet, but it’s possible. “Whether they’ve gotten to the point of trying to use potentially sensitive psychological traits in order to encourage certain kinds of messages … I think that would be a step that people ought to be very concerned about,” Turow says.
Turow notes that sensitive psychological states like depression and certain kinds of fears should be “treated with great care” and “are not to be trifled with.” “You’re messing with a person’s life when you’re doing things of that sort,” he adds. “There are ethical lines beyond which companies can’t or shouldn’t go.”
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