At the moment, they rely upon users reporting anything that looks illegal. The Instagram global review team tells us it checks reports 24/7, and as soon as they are made aware of violating content, they work quickly to remove it. If your teen is dealing with mental health challenges, make sure they know there are safer ways to cope. When someone scrolls through dozens of upbeat videos about drinking or smoking weed, they start to see it as normal, even expected. According to Instagram’s Help Center, one user can have up to five different Instagram accounts and switch between them without logging out—and our researchers found this feature plays an important role in the “thinspiration” community.
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The content teens consume online contributes to risky decisions offline—and in some cases, tragically fatal ones. Drugs like chemical inhalants and opioids are a very real public health crisis. For teens with existing risk factors like mental health challenges or family trauma, TikTok’s messaging can be especially harmful. A funny video about getting high may reinforce the idea that substances are a solution to deeper problems. If you suspect that your teen may be using, buying (or selling) drugs, we’re here to help. We are available to provide substance abuse counseling for your teen and your family.
The research suggested that minor users had access to a range of pharmaceuticals on the platform. Separately, TTP says Instagram did not take decisive action against the content it found on the platform. The organization claims it submitted 50 posts to the company for review. Of those, Instagram said 36 (or 72 percent) did not violate its Community Guidelines, despite what TTP says were “clear signs” of drug dealing activity.
Take the page for the hashtag #th1n, a reference to “thin.” On the app, Instagram showed a warning on the #th1n page that the content may go against its Community Guidelines. Yet the same #th1n page on the Instagram website included no such warnings, despite the presence of some graphic eating disorder content. During our experiment, Instagram blocked the hashtags #ana (short for anorexia) and #mia (short for bulimia), but our researchers found that the fully spelled out hashtags for #аnorexia, #bulimia, and #magersucht (anorexia in German) were still active. What’s more, typing “ana” or “mia” into the Instagram search bar as non-hashtags still yields a significant amount of content promoting eating disorders. During the experiment, our first account received personal messages from other users who likely found our account through the Discovery tab. Clearfork Academy is a network of behavioral health facilities in Texas committed to helping teens recover from behavioral addictions, substance abuse, and mental health disorders.
Buying Guides
- Accounts on sites like Instagram, Snapchat and Yellow are used to advertise the sale of illegal class-A substances with images and photos of the product, before customers and clients arrange a sale – either in person or by delivery.
- Meta-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram says it prohibits buying and selling of drugs.
- Instead, they promote a filtered, upbeat version of reality that minimizes harm, spreading misinformation about prescription drugs, alcoholic beverages, and even illegal drugs.
Congress held hearings on the platforms in October after reports in The Wall Street Journal highlighted concerns that Instagram could harm the mental health of young users, particularly teenage girls. During those hearings, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) pointed to another TTP report, which found that Facebook approved ads promoting drug use and anorexia. While social media platforms have been a predominant vehicle for drug dealing, schools and places where teens hang out are still the primary spots drug dealers depend on to get their products into the hands of young people. Even if the arrangements are made via social media, the delivery of the substances can easily take place on school grounds or at a neighborhood hangout. Snapchat is one of the most popular apps for buying and selling drugs because the messages automatically disappear. This feature prevents parents and the authorities from tracking or even seeing the messages.
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Professional support can make all the difference in preventing a temporary mistake from instagram makes it easy for teens to find drugs, report finds becoming a long-term crisis. Under these tags, users share experiences and skits related to cannabis, ketamine, or even prescription drug misuse. These videos often present drug use as funny or bonding, downplaying or ignoring risks. Teens frequently post vaping tricks and brand endorsements, portraying vaping as trendy and harmless. The health risks, addiction potential, and legal issues are rarely mentioned.
“We prohibit drug sales on Instagram. We removed 1.8 million pieces of content related to drug sales in the last quarter alone,” a spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company, Meta, wrote in a statement emailed to FOX 13 late Wednesday. Until Instagram removes drug-selling accounts that violate its policies, and stops directing users to such accounts, the platform will continue to pose a threat to vulnerable teens. In December 2021, a Tech Transparency Project (TTP) investigation found that Instagram allowed teen users as young as 13 to find drugs for sale, ranging from Xanax to opioids to ecstasy, often in just two clicks. There have been at least two notable recent arrests of teens in the US using Instagram and Snapchat to sell drugs. In January this year, a 19 year-old from Oregon was arrested by police officers, external– he is accused of selling marijuana on Snapchat. He’d been posting images of himself with large amounts of cash on Instagram.
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There were also instances when Instagram blocked a drug-related hashtag while suggesting alternatives to our teen users. For example, when a teen user searched for #opiates, Instagram returned no direct results—but suggested other hashtags like #opiatesforsale. After following the account of a Xanax dealer, a fake minor user got a direct message “with a menu of products, prices, and shipping options,” the report found. A fake minor account that followed an Instagram dealer got suggestions to follow an account selling Adderall. But as TTP’s latest findings demonstrate, Instagram still has a long way to go to clean up its existing platform. Instagram is rife with accounts that violate its policies against the sale of “non-medical or pharmaceutical drugs”—and teens continue to have full access to them.
Another serious issue uncovered during the investigation was that Instagram’s policy of defaulting young users’ accounts to private is a job half-done. Accounts created using the app were set to private, but those set up using the website continued with a publicly visible profile. Social media companies are under growing pressure to eradicate drug dealing on their platforms, says Ashly Fuller, a PhD candidate at University College London researching the sale and advertisement of illegal drugs to young people on social media. Data released by social media companies shows that millions of pieces of drug-related content are already taken down every year.
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A spokesperson for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, said the accounts identified by the Tech Transparency Project had been disabled. “We don’t allow the sale of illicit drugs and our systems detect and remove over 96% of violating drug content before people report it,” the spokesperson says. Tech Transparency Project (TTP) conducted an investigation into the safeguarding practices Instagram employs to keep minors away from finding accounts that sell potentially deadly drugs, Engadget reports.
And when the teenagers reported the comments to Instagram, he says, the company seemed to do nothing. TAMPA, Fla. – Despite Instagram’s promises to crack down, a new report shows just how easy it is for teens to access drugs on the platform. The report comes as Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified on Capitol Hill Wednesday about the app’s impact on children. “I would say Instagram is one of the worst places for exposure to this kind of content,” Tim Mackey, a professor at the University of California, San Diego and founder of S-3, a company that tracks illegal drug sales online, told NBC News.
For example, when our teen account searched for the hashtag #xanax in the Instagram web app, it got no results at all. But the same #xanax search on the mobile app produced several Xanax sellers under the “Accounts” tab. Although Instagram promised to make it harder for accounts to find young people, by default the test account created on the app for a 15-year old teen allowed strangers to tag it, although it was set as “private”. Similarly, TTP created an account for a 15-year old on Instagram’s website and it was set to “public” by default.
- Many of the recommended accounts explicitly promoted anorexia and bulimia, listing goal weights as low as 77 pounds.
- They also use Snapchat to initiate contact with teens and reach out to them in an effort to find “new clients’.
- A search for “Denver” and “Boulder” on the Kik messaging app returned dozens of results for groups dedicated to selling and buying drugs that were open to the public, the report showed.
- Accounts created using the app were set to private, but those set up using the website continued with a publicly visible profile.
- The Apple and Google app stores offer VPNs without revealing they’re owned by Chinese companies.
Holding Big Tech accountable
The humble maple leaf, meanwhile, is the universal symbol for all drugs. The rise of drug dealers on Snapchat is taking advantage of the increased privacy features to target teens and avoid getting caught by authorities. “These results show that Teen Accounts was effectively a PR exercise that was designed to appease lawmakers on Capitol Hill but actually has not fundamentally changed the dial,” says Andy Burrows, the CEO of the Molly Rose Foundation.