Lucrezia Scotellaro
More and more people around the world are using social media. According to the 2023 official United Nations’ estimation, the number of active users has reached 8.01 billion. Instagram turns out to be among the most widely used platforms for sharing photos, videos, and also for commenting, liking, and saving content. But is it all always harmless?
Toxic, sexually-charged videos: an investigation by The Wall Street Journal
A lengthy investigation by The Wall Street Journal a few years ago highlighted how Instagram’s algorithm offers a mix of toxic videos, including sexually-charged footage of children. The Journal found that algorithms run by Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, connect large communities interested in sexual content that often involves minors. In essence, through accounts they made up for the investigation, they found that the platform hosts a mix of adult pornography and material that sexualizes children. It was a major accusation – to which Meta responded quickly – as it set up a task force and expanded its automated systems to detect users behaving suspiciously, periodically blocking tens of thousands of accounts like this. The American news outlet’s research went on for months, during which “test Instagram accounts” ran by adults were created to follow gymnasts, cheerleaders, and other young influencers. They found that these accounts that followed “only” girls prompted Instagram to start posting videos from accounts promoting adult sexual content, along with ads from major consumer brands. Algorithmic experts found that starting with innocuous content such as gymnastics, for example, some Instagram users following preteen gymnast girls found themselves being “pushed” videos with sexual content – content that unfortunately showed children. “Niche content provides a much stronger signal than general content,” said Jonathan Stray, senior scientist at the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley. Niche content is so defined because it is usually less generic and is geared toward a specific audience (designers, book-lovers, etc.) or a very specific activity. Once Instagram identifies a user as interested in a particular topic, its algorithms are trained to push them related content. The investigation showed that the tendency of Instagram’s algorithms to gather content that sexualizes children across its platform has been a well-known issue internally. However, preventing the system from continuing to offer harmful content to affected users, experts explained, would require significant changes to its algorithms, which are the content filtering systems that are difficult to manage even by the platform’s own security officers who often don’t have access to this type of system.
Reels alert: difficult to manage content
Reels, the Instagram service that allows users to share short videos (up to 90 seconds), are also under indictment. It poses several security risks, according to former Meta employees. “Part of the problem,” they report, “is that automated systems have more difficulty analyzing video content than text or still images. Another difficulty stems from the way Reels works: instead of showing content shared by users’ friends, as other parts of Instagram and Facebook often do, Reels promotes videos from sources they don’t follow.”
Meta, which owns Instagram, said after the report was published that it had removed thousands of hashtags used by pedophiles to connect traffickers and other sex offenders on the platform and that it had introduced new features to make it even more difficult for adults to interact with teens.
Digital education needed
In conclusion, platforms – and this is a fact – can be very insidious and even harmful, as research and surveys periodically show.
If we want to stick with looking at the case of Instagram, it is important to consider the particular nature of this social network, which makes it the most dangerous of all, being a social network based exclusively on appearance. Its purpose is to showcase one’s standard of living, what one does, and what one owns. It’s basically based on a continuous mechanism of social comparison with others, pushing us to “one up” others. If we could compare it to one of the seven deadly sins, it would probably be the sin of vanity.
Tik Tok, on the other hand, is all about people’s ability to perform, for example, lip-synching or dancing. On Facebook, it’s all about the expressing one’s state of mind through statuses. Instagram is all about appearances, performing, and making everyone feel inferior to us.
With this in mind, it’s easy to come across toxic content, more or less unwittingly. That’s why we need to warn people about its risks. Just as it is a fact, confirmed by data and statistics, that children use social media for hours every day and often do so without parental supervision. Not everything the internet offers us if bad, of course, but we should use the platform carefully. We should be aware of both its benefits and risks. In the case of minors, parents have this responsibility. Education, a fascinating art that is always changing and new, includes a “digital education,” too.
