Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen continued her public campaign against her former employer this week, participating in a roundtable discussion at Georgetown University to warn against the potential risks of using the platform. According to Haugen, Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms are a powerful tool to hook young users and potentially cause them mental harm. And parents, she said, might be making it worse without even knowing it.

While anyone can get sucked in by Facebook, Haugen says that young users are particularly vulnerable to the stress and mental health problems this can cause.

“Once you get an hour or two in, Facebook’s algorithms are the main thing that’s choosing what you’re focusing on,” Haugen said. “Now you’re in the zone where you really are just putting yourselves in the algorithm’s hands.”

“That’s where that feedback cycle gets so scary, where people get trapped and they get pulled in,” she continued.

She also said that parents may inadvertently make the problem worse by not understanding their child’s addiction and downplaying it, making them feel shame for not being able to quit. In response, Haugen is calling for more transparency from Facebook about how its systems are built and what exactly they’re doing to protect young users. That might seem unlikely, but this kind of public pressure is the only proven way to make the social media giant answer for its issues.

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