Instagram, the new profiles for teenagers are not enough to protect against sensitive content: the US report

Available from the end of 2024 also in Italy and designed to protect young people from sensitive content, i Instagram profiles for teenagers They don’t work as they should. It is the conclusion that the U.S. non -profit account has come to a report eloquently entitled Scary Feeds: frightening feed. Published in recent days and based on the browsing experiences experienced between 10 March and 4 May on a created champion ad hoc of accounts of this type, in fact detected the recommendation by the algorithm of Sexual material in five out of five cases and of content that encouraged eating disorders in four out of five cases. It was not enough – we read -, even « alcohol, steroids and supplements », « racists, homophobic and misogynos » or that portrayed « violence with firearms, domestic violence and even representations of female biological processes for openly sexualized purposes ».

The test of the « Washington Post »

« About 80% of the contents present in my feed were related to raw erotic games ora games – said one of the testers -. Generally they were not completely explicit or did not show directly manifest images, but at the same time they left very little space for imagination ». Vice versa, Only one out of five account came across educational posts. Shocked by the details described by the document, also the technological publishing of the Washington Post Geoffrey A. Fowler He therefore performed the same experiment in the first person. Result? «In the first ten minutes spent on my trial profile for teenagers – he told Sunday -, Instagram recommended a video that celebrated a man who passed out for drinking too much alcohol. Another showed instead a ring with a tiny spoon that is marketed to provide a « blow » of flavor tobacco, but which is also associated with cocaine. In the end, the account recommendations turned into a real Obsession for alcohol and nicotine productslike Zyn, who even appeared once every five Reel I saw ».

The company’s reply

Reached by Fowler himself, the spokesperson for Meta Liza Crenshaw it has not proved to be much alarmed: « A report does not change the fact that thanks to the accounts for teenagers tens of millions of teenagers now have a safer experience on Instagram, » he wrote in an email. «The document is imperfect – then continued to defend the Menlo Park giant -, but also taking it to the letter identified only 61 content deemed « sensitive », less than 0.3% of all those that the authors probably saw during the test». Also stocked by the journalist, he added that the company was however « examining the reason why a fraction » of the contents reported had been recommended by the app, however it did not answer the question on how « its automated systems decide what the un appicked content for teenagers are ». A decidedly noisy silenceall the more a few days after the publication of one study conducted by the University of Cambridge from which it emerged that 11-19 year olds suffering from mental health problems (such as sleep, anxiety and depressive disorders) tend to spend more time on social network Compared to peers who do not suffer from any discomfort of this kind. The road to go, for Instagram and beyond, is still (very, but very) long.