Instagram is harming teenagers by offering a conduit for illegal substances like Xanax and MDMA, as per a recent analysis from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP).
According to a TTP investigation, the social networking site allows juvenile users as young as 13 to access potentially dangerous drugs for sale in only two clicks, raising further concerns about the platform’s hazards to youngsters.
TTP used a series of false profiles to test the restrictions in place on Instagram to protect children from illegal drugs as part of its investigation. According to the report, a hypothetical youngster simply needed two clicks to reach an account selling Xanax whereas, ironically they needed more than double the number of clicks to log out of Instagram.
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While drug-related hashtags like #mdma (for the party drug ecstasy) are banned on the platform, but if the teen user searched for terms like ‘mdmamolly’ referred to people who sell the substance, then the app’s search algorithm made it easy to find those hashtags, with its autocomplete feature pointing researchers in the right direction.
Further, when a teen account followed a drug dealer on Instagram, the platform started recommending other accounts selling drugs. Shockingly, drug dealers operate ‘openly on Instagram, offering people of any age a variety of pills, including the opioid Oxycontin. Many of these dealers mention drugs directly in their account names to advertise their services’, the company pointed out.
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