A recent investigation reveals that Instagram would have recommended Reels with sexual content to teenagers as young as 13 years old, even without them specifically searching for that type of videos. The investigation was carried out by The Wall Street Journal and Laura Edelson, a professor at Northeastern University, who created new accounts and set the age to 13 years old to conduct a series of tests between January and April of this year.
The report states that, since the beginning of the tests, Instagram offered moderately suggestive videos, such as women dancing sensually or focused on their bodies. By interacting with these videos and skipping other Reels, the test accounts started receiving recommendations for more explicit content.
Among the suggested videos were women imitating sexual acts and users promising to send nudes to those who commented on their accounts. In some cases, people were exhibiting their genitals and, on one occasion, the test user received “video after video about anal sex”. In just three minutes, teenagers were watching these videos, and in 20 minutes, their recommended Reels section was flooded with sexual content.
To contrast the data, researchers conducted the same tests with TikTok and Snapchat, but none of these platforms recommended sexual videos to teenage accounts, even after actively searching and following inappropriate content creators.
The Wall Street Journal report also reveals that some Meta employees had previously detected similar issues, based on internal documents detailing harmful experiences on Instagram for younger teenagers. According to these documents, Meta’s security staff conducted similar tests with equivalent results.
However, Andy Stone, spokesperson for Meta, dismissed the report published by The Wall Street Journal, claiming that “it was an artificial experiment that does not reflect the reality of how teenagers use Instagram.” He stated that the company has implemented measures to further reduce the amount of sensitive content that teenagers can see on Instagram, leading to “significant reductions in these figures in recent months.”
