Such questions will be front and center for Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, when he testifies before a Senate panel on Wednesday. Researchers found that Instagram recommended accounts full of disturbing images of underweight women to users who showed an interest in getting thin. Many of the recommended accounts explicitly promoted anorexia and bulimia, listing goal weights as low as 77 pounds. The Department of Law worked with representatives from Meta, Snapchat and TikTok to compile the report, as well as law enforcement, public health experts and harm reduction advocates. Teens buying prescription or designer drugs such as Xanax online are often receiving counterfeit pills containing lethal fentanyl doses. The FBI is currently investigating Snapchat’s role in fentanyl distribution.
Instagram makes it easy for teens to find drug content: Report
When a teen account followed a drug dealer on Instagram, the platform started recommending other accounts selling drugs, highlighting how the company’s algorithms try to keep young people engaged regardless of dangerous content. When a teen account followed a drug dealer on Instagram, the platform began recommending other accounts selling drugs, highlighting how the company’s algorithms attempt to keep young people engaged despite potentially harmful content. When a hypothetical teen user logged into the Instagram app, it only took two clicks to reach an account selling drugs like Xanax, according to the investigation. In comparison, it took the teen more than double the number of clicks – five – to log out of Instagram.
- Data released by social media companies shows that millions of pieces of drug-related content are already taken down every year.
- A funny video about getting high may reinforce the idea that substances are a solution to deeper problems.
- The Drug Enforcement Administration has warned of the alarming increase in the availability and lethality of fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine.
- Snapchat also features “Snap Map”, which helps localize drug deals and increases accessibility for teens.
Report finds Instagram makes it easy for teens to find drugs online
Between July and September 2024, Meta says that 96 percent of drug sales content that violated its terms was removed before a user reported it. TikTok, meanwhile, removed 99.5 percent of content violating its policy on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs before it was reported, according to its Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for the second quarter of 2024. Yet even after Meta unveiled Teen Accounts, critics maintain social media is still dangerous for vulnerable kids. According to a new report from the Molly Rose Foundation—named for Molly Russell, a U.K. Schoolgirl who died by suicide in 2017—Instagram’s algorithm is still recommending self-harm content to teens « at industrial scale. »
- The research by Reset and TTP adds to growing questions about Instagram’s impact on users struggling with body image issues, especially young people.
- “There is an understanding that seeing these ads on social media is correlated to a decreased risk perception, and young people are led to think the drugs are safer.” Of the teenagers she sampled, 10 percent reported purchasing drugs via social media.
- In one case, the platform automatically populated the results when a user started typing “buyxanax” into the search bar.
Karan Johar vows to return to sets in 2026 after a year of self-reflection
According to a research by the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project (TTP), Instagram is pushing drug-related content to teen accounts. According to Instagram, the prevalence of content viewed on its platform related to drug sales is about 0.05%. When the report’s hypothetical teen followed a page selling Xanax, a suggestion popped up for them to follow a page selling Adderall.
The following are screenshots of the interaction between the “coach” and our test account. The “coach” immediately attempted to shift the interaction to other platforms such as Snapchat or Telegram, where personal conversations between users are harder to track by both the platforms and law enforcement authorities. Interestingly, many of the pro-ana accounts recommended by Instagram had smaller follower counts. Accounts like these would normally have a hard time getting traction on the platform, but Instagram’s algorithmic amplification actively promoted them to new users, helping them find a broader audience. The research by Reset and TTP adds to growing questions about Instagram’s impact on users struggling with body image issues, especially young people.
News #Tags
Teens seeking drugs on Instagram just need money, an account, and an address to get anything they want. Weiser urged social media companies to adopt strong, uniform practices to prevent and respond to illegal drug sales. He also called for a federal agency to oversee social media platforms and legislation that would give the federal government more access to their data. A lot of social media companies, including Meta, TikTok and Snapchat, have policies that ban advertising, buying or selling drugs and some have made efforts to work with law enforcement to address the issue.
Dealers are aware that Snapchat is a platform used predominantly by people 18 years old and younger, so they get on the app and connect with teens who are trying to find drugs. They also use Snapchat to initiate contact with teens and reach out to them in an effort to find “new clients’. Although social media companies do not endorse this behavior and it is illegal in the US, most platforms aren’t able to stop this activity.
Report Shows Instagram Makes it Easy for Teens to Find Drugs Online
Visit More Than Rehab to speak with a caring team that understands the pressures today’s youth face—and how to turn things around before it’s too late. The “Nutmeg Challenge” encouraged teens to consume large amounts of the spice for a psychedelic effect. Nutmeg in high doses is toxic, leading to confusion, heart palpitations, and lasting damage. Yet the challenge gained traction, often presented as a weird experiment rather than a serious risk. While this information may seem a little scary, having this knowledge will equip you to intervene and be aware of what your kids may be doing on social media.
Viral Content as the “New Normal”
The report comes just one day before Adam Mosseri is slated to testify to the Senate about Instagram’s impact on young users. The platform has faced increasing scrutiny in recent weeks following testimony from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. According to Haugen, Meta, then Facebook, knew from its own internal research Instagram was harmful to many teens and yet the company disregarded those warnings. TTP’s findings are likely to inform some of the questions the consumer protection subcommittee asks Mosseri on Wednesday. These videos rarely show outcomes like hangovers, arrests, or overdoses. Instead, they promote a filtered, upbeat version of reality that minimizes harm, spreading misinformation about prescription drugs, alcoholic beverages, and even illegal drugs.
The growth curve of our first test account further illustrates the problem of algorithmic amplification on Instagram. The account’s audience increased by more than seven fold in the three weeks after its last activity, suggesting that Instagram recommended it to other users. They stopped going outside much, spending days curled up in their room, scrolling through images of girls cutting themselves. The self-harm content “was kind of comforting”—it felt like a twisted validation of their depression in a way.
In 2021, at least 1,881 Coloradans died of a drug overdose and roughly half of those people died of fentanyl, according to state data. Many of those people are taking fentanyl without realizing it, as the cheap synthetic opioid is cut into other drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. At the age of 59, he went back to college and graduated 41 years after his first graduation from Weatherford College. God placed on his heart at that time the passion to begin to help others as they walked from addictions, alcoholism, and instagram makes it easy for teens to find drugs, report finds abuse of substances. « It’s the compulsive psychological feelings that the kids are attached to the phone and cannot stop using it, » says Dr. Yunyu Xiao, the lead author of the study and assistant professor of population health science at Weill Cornell.