UK-based cosmetics company Lush closed its Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat accounts worldwide on September 26, showing concern about the effects of social media after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen made her revelations.

The Guardian reports that the cosmetic giant released a statement earlier stating, “In the same way that evidence against climate change was ignored and belittled for decades, concerns about the serious effects of social media are going largely ignored now”.

This announcement came from Lush just before one of the biggest days of shopping and the brand is totally aware of the fact that losing these channels to its millions of customers will render a big blow to its business. CEO Mark Constantine has also embraced this loss over the effects of social media on teen mental health.

He said, “I’m happy to lose £10 million by quitting Facebook” referring to the money that he expects to lose by shutting down the social media accounts. Lush had a combined followers of 10.6 million in Facebook and Instagram adds the report. He also added that Lush had ‘no other option’ but to shut the accounts down after Meta’s own research about Instagram’s adverse effect on the mental health of teen girls’.

The report adds that he said, “We’ve tightened up over the Covid period, it won’t destroy us. We’re talking about suicide here, not spots or whether someone should dye their hair blonde. How could we possibly suggest we’re a caring business if we look at that and don’t care?”

The cosmetic giant has taken public stands before on different social issues in the past years and has also quit Facebook and Instagram in 2019 as it was “tired of fighting the algorithms” but later returned to the platforms that year. Again, it joined other big advertisers to boycott Meta’s Instagram and Facebook in 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers only to return again after a few months.

The company’s CEO has ensured that it didn’t take such an action as ‘a PR stunt’ and it was done for ‘genuine reasons’. He also added that if the company reversed the decision this time he would turn into ‘a laughing stock’.

For the study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the team included data from 13 waves of a non-probability internet survey conducted approximately monthly between May 2020 and May 2021 among individuals aged 18 years and older in the US…