Instagram regularly recommends sexual videos to accounts for teenagers that appear interested in racy content, and does so within minutes of when they first log in, according to tests by The Wall Street Journal and an academic researcher.

The tests, run over seven months ending in June, show that the social-media service has continued pushing adult-oriented content to minors after parent Meta Platforms increase; green up pointing triangle said in January that it was giving teens a more age-appropriate experience by restricting what it calls sensitive content including sexually suggestive material.

Separate testing by the Journal and Laura Edelson, a computer-science professor at Northeastern University, used similar methodology, involving setting up new accounts with ages listed as 13. The accounts then watched Instagram’s curated video stream, known as Reels.

Instagram served a mix of videos that, from the start, included moderately racy content such as women dancing seductively or posing in positions that emphasized their breasts. When the accounts skipped past other clips but watched those racy videos to completion, Reels recommended edgier content.

Adult sex-content creators began appearing in the feeds in as little as three minutes. After less than 20 minutes watching Reels, the test accounts’ feeds were dominated by promotions for such creators, some offering to send nude photos to users who engaged with their posts.

Similar tests on the short-video products of Snapchat decrease; red down pointing triangle and TikTok didn’t produce the same sexualized content for underage users.

“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.”

https://www.wsj.com/tech/instagram-recommends-sexual-videos-to-accounts-for-13-year-olds-tests-show-b6123c65?mod=mhp