Lush: High Street chain with three Glasgow stores announces it is leave some social media platforms

Vegan handmade cosmetics company Lush has announced that they will be removing their accounts on social media platforms.

The company will leave Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat until the platforms are made “safer” for users and until they are more protected from harmful content.

The shutdown will start on Friday and be rolled out across all 48 countries in which Lush has stores.

Jack Constantine, chief digital officer and product inventor at Lush, told the BBC’s Today programme that social media platforms need to do more.

He said: "[Social media channels] do need to start listening to the reality of how they’re impacting people’s mental health and the damage that they’re causing through their craving for the algorithm to be able to constantly generate content regardless of whether it’s good for the users or not."

On this occasion, Lush has said that they will remain off these channels for a year.

The company’s accounts on Twitter and Youtube will remain active for customers to view.

Lush has over 650,000 followers on its Instagram account and over 8,000 likes on its Glasgow Buchanan Street store Facebook page.

Mr Constantine also said that the company acknowledged the damage to sales which could come from leaving the social media platforms.

He added: “We already know that there is potential damage of £10m in sales and we need to be able to gain that back.

“We’ve got a year to try to get that back and let’s hope we can do that.”