Social media platform Instagram actively pushes sexual content into the feeds of accounts registered as teenagers, according to a study done by an academic researcher with The Wall Street Journal.
The study was conducted over seven months, from November to June, by Laura Edelson, a professor of computer science at Northeastern University and cross-checked by the Journal. They discovered that Instagram continued to push adult content—reels of provocatively dressed women with suggestive titles and captions—onto accounts listed as 13-year-olds even after Meta said it was changing its code so teens would see less sexual material and other sensitive content.
Instagram pushed adult sex content to minors after parent company Meta Platforms said it would give teens an “age-appropriate” experience, tests by a researcher and The Wall Street Journal found https://t.co/5aqF582DWh https://t.co/5aqF582DWh
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 20, 2024
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The content ranged from seductive dancing to women posing in ways to accentuate their breasts, according to the Journal. When they quickly scrolled past other clips but stopped on the suggestive videos, the algorithm began recommending even more extreme material.
Onlyfans porn creators began getting recommended to the accounts within three minutes. Just 20 minutes of scrolling caused their “Explore” feeds to get swarmed with porn accounts.
According to the Journal, similar tests with Snapchat and TikTok did not lead to the same result. “All three platforms also say that there are differences in what content will be recommended to teens,” Edelson said. “But even the adult experience on TikTok appears to have much less explicit content than the teen experience on Reels.”
Related: Snapchat to Pay $15 Million to Settle Sexual Harassment, Gender Discrimination Lawsuit
When contacted about the findings, Meta wrote it off. “This was an artificial experiment that doesn’t match the reality of how teens use Instagram,” said spokesman Andy Stone. “As part of our long-running work on youth issues, we established an effort to further reduce the volume of sensitive content teens might see on Instagram, and have meaningfully reduced these numbers in the past few months,” he added.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.
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