How Instagram Broke Its Promise to Protect Teens

"It won't be in search, it won't be in hashtags, it won't be in recommendations. Beginning in the 2010s, the company had come under scrutiny for its perceived role in a growing teen mental health crisis. Then, in 2017, a 14-year-old girl in the United Kingdom named Molly Russell committed suicide after being fed self-harm content on Instagram."

"Russell's death spurred an international reckoning on teenage social media usage. But nearly a year after Mosseri assured the public that Instagram was taking action, executives for Meta, Instagram's parent company, appeared to admit the algorithm was still pushing self-harm and eating disorder content."

In February 2019, Instagram's head Adam Mosseri pledged to remove graphic self-harm content from search, hashtags, and recommendations. This commitment followed years of scrutiny over Instagram's role in teen mental health crises, intensified by the 2017 suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who had been exposed to self-harm content on the platform. Russell's death prompted international concern about teenage social media usage. However, nearly a year after Mosseri's public assurance, Meta executives acknowledged that Instagram's algorithm continued distributing self-harm and eating disorder content, revealing a significant gap between the company's stated policies and actual platform practices.

Read at Thefp