Does Instagram Push Drug Content to Teens?

Drug-Related Content on Instagram

Drug-related content is being shared on Instagram accounts by young people, according to an investigation by watchdog group Tech Transparency Project (TTP). Despite promising to limit the sale of drugs, the company continues to offer hashtags for the purchase of illegal substances to children as young as 13, the investigation found. The best addiction treatment center in Karachi has seen patients who were buying from online platforms.

As part of the investigation into minors' experiences on the platform, the TTP created seven different fake teen accounts.

The company's algorithms were found to have helped hypothetical minors between the ages of 13 and 17 establish connections with drug dealers pretending to sell MDMA and fentanyl.

Instagram CEO's Statement

The news comes as Instagram's CEO prepares to testify Wednesday before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. Members of Congress will likely ask him to speak about Instagram's potential negative impact on children.

"I would encourage Congress to ask him if he allows his children to use Instagram and if he monitors their activities," says the director of TTP. Twenty seconds is all it takes to contact a suspected drug dealer. According to the reports, they are children. That's the most shocking part. The platform's business model is based on the ability to reach younger users. If they can't do that without getting kids to take these risks, then lawmakers need to do a much more thorough investigation."

On Tuesday, Instagram announced a series of changes to keep teens safe on the app. These include parental controls that allow parents to limit the amount of time their children spend on the app, options to prevent under-16s from being tagged if they are not being followed, and a feature called "Take a Break" that encourages users to leave the app more often. The specialists at the best addiction treatment center in Karachi say most of the time the dealers contact back the addicts online on social platforms.

TTP defines drug dealers as accounts that offer drugs for sale for non-medical and pharmaceutical purposes. The organization did not purchase drugs as part of its investigation, which means that some of the identified drug dealer accounts may be fraudulent.

When a teenager's account logged into Instagram, it took only two taps to reach an account claiming to sell Xanax or Fentanyl. In contrast, it took five taps to exit the Instagram app.

They make it harder to get out, but they make it easier to find drugs.

Investigation

TTP reported 50 posts from the accounts of alleged drug dealers. Instagram found that 72 percent of them did not violate the company's community guidelines, the researchers said. Among them was a "buy Xanax" account that twice called one of TTP's 15-year-old fake accounts via Instagram messenger. TTP said Instagram removed 12 of those posts and an entire account that violated the company's policies. However, when investigators checked, the supposedly removed account was still active. recent news independently confirmed this finding.

Spokespersons for Meta, Instagram's parent company, said in a statement about the findings, "We have banned drug sales on Instagram. In the last quarter alone, we removed 1.8 million pieces of content related to drug sales. Thanks to our enhanced detection technology, the incidence of such content are approximately 0.05% of all content viewed, which is about 5 views per 10,000. We will continue to improve in this area to make Instagram safe, especially for our younger community members."

Younger markets

Instagram has been striving to attract younger users since 2012. According to the company's research, the number of Facebook teen users has decreased significantly since 2019 and is expected to continue to decline over the next two years. Even Instagram, which remains popular among younger age groups, is attracting fewer and fewer teens. The experts at the best addiction treatment center in Karachi say that teens are more vulnerable to getting into contact with drug addicts online.

According to the recent news, Instagram began spending almost its entire marketing budget in 2018 - an estimated $390 million by 2021 - to target teens. The company has been focusing especially on 13-15-year-olds. It later began developing the Instagram Kids' app specifically for kids 13 and under but halted those efforts due to opposition from regulators and child protection authorities.

The platform's impact on teenagers came under fire in September when the Wall Street Journal published internal research that found Instagram causes body image disturbances in some teenage girls. The research comes from documents obtained by Facebook whistleblowers.

Earlier this year, Instagram announced that it would make profiles of users under 16 private by default. But TTP discovered that this policy only applied to profiles created through the Instagram app. When TPP created an account for a 15-year-old through Instagram's website, the account was public by default.

Autofill for medication

Although Instagram prohibits hashtags such as #fentanyl, #oxycontin, and #mdma, when the TTP teen's account searched for #mdma, Instagram automatically filled the search bar with drug-related hashtags. The same happened when a teenage account searched for the keywords "buy Xanax" and "buy fentanyl." According to the TTP report, when a teenager's account, clicked on one of the suggested accounts, they "immediately received a direct connection to a Xanax [or fentanyl] retailer."