"I have to be thin,""Eternally starved,""I want to be perfect." These are the names of accounts Instagram's algorithms promoted to an account registered as belonging to a 13-year-old girl who expressed interest in weight loss and dieting.
The extreme dieting accounts were promoted to an Instagram account set up by Sen. Richard Blumenthal's staff. The Connecticut Senator's team registered an account as a 13-year-old girl and proceeded to follow some dieting and pro-eating disorder accounts . Soon, Instagram's algorithm began almost exclusively recommending the young teenage account should follow more and more extreme dieting accounts, the Senator told CNN.
Speaking to CNN Monday, Blumenthal said:"This experience shows very graphically how [Facebook's] claims to protect children or take down accounts that may be dangerous to them are absolute hogwash." Blumenthal's experiment goes a layer deeper, showing how quickly Instagram's algorithm promotes harmful content to young users.
"We're constantly looking for validation that we're right, even if that validation is really, really harmful to our personal health," Keel added, raising the stakes for Instagram to avoid promoting such content. Instagram has also pushed back on claims about its role in perpetuating harmful behaviors by saying that social comparison is a widespread issue and that potentially problematic images are also available elsewhere. Indeed,"pro-anorexia" online communities have been around for years, predating the rise of Instagram. However, Instagram's broad reach among young women and girls means that such content posted to its platform can be especially dangerous, according to Keel.