Mainstream Contributors To Sexual Exploitation
Capture and Share The World's Moments
For countless children and adults that includes their worst moments. Grooming, child sexual abuse materials, sex trafficking, and many other harms continue to fester on Instagram.
Like so many other 12-year-old girls, Maya* just wanted to feel special.
And that’s how Robert* made her feel. He may just be a stranger messaging her on Instagram, but he was kind to her, told her she was pretty . . . So, when Robert asked for naked photos, Maya thought it couldn’t hurt.
She was wrong.
The interactions escalated to meeting in person, and before she knew it, Maya was being sex trafficked. Robert advertised her on her Instagram profile (which he took control of), and soon Maya was receiving direct messages from other men intending to pay to sexually abuse the 12-year-old girl.
Even after Maya escaped her sex trafficking situation, the exploitation did not end. Her trafficker had taken explicit photos and videos of her being sexually abused and continued to sell these on Instagram. The direct messages from sex buyers kept coming as well.
Overwhelmed and helpless, Maya fell into depression . . . At age fifteen, she died at the hands of a 43-year-old man who was contacting her on Instagram.
Instagram failed Maya. Their tools to detect grooming did not prevent an underage girl from being contacted by sexual exploiters and older men. The child sexual abuse material being circulated by Maya’s trafficker was reported, but was still on the platform at the time of Maya’s death.
Tragically, Maya is only one of countless children who are exploited and harmed on Instagram.
A 2022 study published by Thorn, a leading resource on online child exploitation, found that Instagram tied with Kik and Tumblr as the platform where minors reported the second highest rates of online sexual interactions with people they thought were adults. And a recent survey of 1,000 parents across the US by ParentsTogether found that Instagram correlated with higher rates of parent-reported children sharing sexual images of themselves – a form of Child Sex Abuse Material.
Children are also regularly exposed to pornography and harmful content on Instagram. The UK Children’s Commissioner report found that 33% of children who had seen pornography saw it on Instagram. Further, Instagram was the only platform to rank in the “top 5 worst” for every category of harm in the 2022 Bark Report: severe sexual content, severe suicidal ideation, depression, body image concerns, severe bullying, hate speech, severe violence.
How is it possible that, after all the scrutiny and backlash Instagram has rightly faced, they still have not made meaningful improvements? Why do they remain at the top of every list of the most harmful platforms? NCOSE is demanding answers—and more than that, we are demanding real change!
Review the proof we’ve collected, read our recommendations for improvement, and see our notification letter to Instagram for more details.
See our Notification Letter to Instagram here.
*Pseudonyms are used to respect the victimized person
Take Action
Our Requests for Improvement
- Invest in technology to scan for and block sexually explicit content in posts and messages
- Prohibit accounts and all content sexualizing minors including hashtags, emojis, comments on minors’ accounts, as well as on adult-managed accounts for children 12 and under
- Remove or limit high-risk features for 13 – 15-year-olds such as direct messaging (as TikTok has done), Vanish Mode, restrict all adults from seeing minors in “suggested user” or “discover people”
- Create pin-protected caregiver oversight tools so children can’t change settings
- Remove all prostitution and pornography accounts even if they are not posting sexually explicit content on Instagram - those should not be available on a platform so popular with teens
Proof
Evidence of Exploitation
WARNING: Any pornographic images have been blurred, but are still suggestive. There may also be graphic text descriptions shown in these sections. POSSIBLE TRIGGER.
Instagram is a top virtual destination for grooming, sextortion, sex trafficking, and more
Multiple news stories, survivor and whistleblower testimony, lawsuits, and external reports would support our assessment that Instagram’s changes aren’t actually doing much to protect children. For years, Instagram has been on the top of nearly every list outlining the most dangerous apps for youth…and recent reports are no different:
- #1 platform for the highest rates of sextortion (Instagram 42%, Snapchat 38%, “by far the most frequently used social media environments where victims were targeted” – Canadian Centre for Child Protection, August 2022)
- #1 platform minors reported potentially harmful experiences (Thorn Report, February 2023)
- #2 parent-reported platform for sexually explicit requests to children; Facebook named #1. (Parents Together report Afraid, Uncertain, and Overwhelmed: A Survey of Parents on Online Sexual Exploitation of Children surveyed 1,000 parents, April 2023)
- #2 social media platform where children were most likely to have seen pornography: 41% on Twitter, 37% on pornography sites, and 33% on Instagram (The UK Children’s Commissioner report ‘A lot of it is actually just abuse’ Young people and pornography, January 2023)
- #2 platform where minors have had a sexual experience with an adult, tied with Kik and Tumblr (Thorn Report, February 2023)
- #2 for highest rates of minors reporting any sexual experiences on the platform (Thorn Report, February 2023)
- Only platform listed in top 5 worst in every single of Bark’s Annual Report categories: severe sexual content, severe suicidal ideation, depression, body image concerns, severe bullying, hate speech, severe violence. (Bark 2022 Annual Report analyzed more than 4.5 billion messages across text, email, YouTube, and 30 + apps and social media platforms.)
- Instagram correlated with higher rates of parent-reported children sharing sexual images of themselves – a form of Child Sex Abuse Material (Parents Together, April 2023)
See the evidence we’ve compiled in this easy to view & download PDF
Sexualization of children and other sexual exploitation continues to fester on Instagram
Articles about Instagram’s inaction and poor policy implementation abound, here are some for the past year:
- A user with more than 33,000 followers that posts sexualized images of young girls was reported by a researcher; Instagram provided a same-day response saying that “due to high volume”, it had not been able to view the report, but that its “technology has found that this account probably doesn’t go against our community guidelines” (The Guardian – April 2022)
- Some accounts containing sexualized images of children and teenagers had a total of more than 500,000 followers (Forbes – June 2022)
- In 2022, Irish regulators sued Instagram for releasing children’s phone numbers and emails (BBC – September 2022)
- Instagram hosts multitudes of “tribute sites” that are public accounts with sexualized photos of teens and children, often scraped from their parents’ private accounts; pedophiles network, exchange tactics, and share links to the dark web in the comments (iNews – November 2022)
- According to a study by pro-prostitution organization Sex Work CEO, 73% of adult content creators use Instagram to find potential sex buyers (showing that prostitution and pornography accounts are active on Instagram – and likely accessible by children as we have found in the past)
Further, as long discussed and brought to Instagram’s attention by NCOSE and also by other advocates like Collective Shout and Defend Dignity—there is a rampant problem of parasitic accounts that collect photos of young children and collect them for fetishization and sexualization. Often in these cases, comments overtly sexualize children and often network to discuss the trading of more explicit content (child sexual abuse material). NCOSE and allied advocates have discussed examples of these accounts to Instagram for years.
See the evidence we’ve compiled in this easy to view & download PDF
Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) trading on Instagram
Unfortunately, NCOSE researchers quickly came across dozens of accounts on Instagram with high markers for likely trading or selling child sexual abuse materials (I.e child pornography.) Why isn’t Instagram proactively removing such networking and sales accounts?
See the evidence we’ve compiled in this easy to view & download PDF
Adult image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) on Instagram
In addition to the many harms perpetuated against children, we know they are not the only ones at risk on your platform. Instagram is increasingly being called out as a hub for image-based sexual abuse – the nonconsensual capture, posting, and sharing of sexually explicit images. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Instagram failed to act on 90% of abuse sent via DM to high-profile women.
See the evidence we’ve compiled in this easy to view & download PDF
