From self-doubt to shopping: Ex-Facebook exec says the company profited off teen girls’ emotional struggles 😔

Cliquez ici pour lire en Français

A former Facebook executive has come forward with serious allegations: that the company deliberately capitalized on moments of self-doubt and emotional vulnerability among teenage girls to boost advertising profits. Behind the promise of a « free » social network, she says, was a finely-tuned system where every emotion—especially negative ones—was treated as a monetizable moment.

Her revelations are reigniting debate about digital surveillance, platform ethics, and the tech industry’s responsibility toward its most vulnerable users.

Personal data turned into profit 📊

In the era of “free” social platforms, nothing really comes without a price. Every click, hesitation, or deleted post becomes part of a growing pool of data—data that’s incredibly valuable. Facebook, along with platforms like Instagram and TikTok, has built its business model on extracting and analyzing this behavioral information.

It’s a model known as surveillance capitalism, and it’s both simple and chilling: the better a company understands your behavior and emotions, the more effectively it can sell you things.

In 2022 alone, the global data economy generated more than $270 billion, with forecasts suggesting that figure could reach nearly $700 billion by 2030. With so much money on the line, targeting methods have grown more advanced—and more ethically questionable.

A system designed to exploit emotional pain 🧠

Sarah Wynn-Williams, who served as Facebook’s head of public policy in Australia, offers a behind-the-scenes look in her new book, Careless People. Between 2011 and 2017, she held several key roles within the company. She describes a corporate culture obsessed with growth and profit, even if it meant refining ad targeting strategies that zeroed in on teens.

According to her account, Facebook tracked behavior patterns among girls aged 13 to 17 to identify emotional low points. One of the most disturbing examples: when a teenage girl deleted a selfie—usually out of insecurity or dissatisfaction—algorithms flagged the action as a signal of vulnerability. That moment was then seen as the perfect time to serve up ads for beauty products.

Turning teen angst into ad campaigns 💸

The tactic, she says, was framed internally as an innovative opportunity for advertisers. Negative emotions—like anxiety, stress, self-doubt, or feeling “ugly”—became entry points into consumer behavior. Facebook’s systems reportedly analyzed phrases like “I feel worthless” or “I hate how I look” to predict when users were most susceptible to personalized ads.

Targeting didn’t stop at emotional states. Wynn-Williams claims certain groups were also profiled by ethnicity and family status. Young mothers and Black or Hispanic communities, for instance, were reportedly assigned “mood scores” to help fine-tune campaigns based on collective emotional states.

Internal reactions reveal a darker truth 🏢

When the Australian press reported on these practices in 2017, Facebook quickly issued a brief denial, claiming the data had been anonymized and that it never intentionally targeted emotions.

But internally, Wynn-Williams paints a different picture. She says company leaders were proud of the emotional targeting strategy—considering it a core strength of Facebook’s business model.

In one instance, a young researcher was allegedly fired to appease public outrage, despite simply following internal directives. Meanwhile, work on adolescent targeting reportedly continued behind closed doors. According to multiple sources, Facebook was even developing a tool that allowed advertisers to directly target emotional profiles.

A dystopia that’s already here 📉

Wynn-Williams says the experience left her deeply unsettled. For her, it’s a stark example of the risks posed by surveillance capitalism. Turning teenage emotional distress into ad dollars isn’t a sci-fi dystopia—it’s a calculated, real-world strategy.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, reportedly took legal action to stop her from promoting Careless People. Still, the book became a bestseller and helped intensify a growing debate around how far tech platforms can and should go in commodifying human emotions.

As technology continues to embed itself deeper into our lives, one question remains: Have social platforms crossed the line when it comes to exploiting our emotions?

💬 What do you think? Join the conversation.