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How to Reduce the Sexual Solicitation of Teens on Instagram

May 2024 🇺🇸 After Babel (Substack) Ages 13–15

In this guest essay for Jonathan Haidt's After Babel newsletter, Béjar lays out, in his own words, the internal Instagram survey findings he had previously raised with Meta leadership — that roughly one in eight users aged 13–15 reported unwanted sexual advances on the platform in a given week. He argues Meta had the tools and data to reduce this pattern but chose not to prioritize it, and that voluntary industry self-regulation has been tried and has not worked. The essay lays out specific product and reporting changes he believes regulators should require of any platform used heavily by teens, positioning legally mandated measurement and disclosure — not new content bans — as the most direct lever available.

~13% of 13–15-year-olds, weekly

Béjar cites internal Instagram survey data finding about one in eight users aged 13–15 reported unwanted sexual advances on the platform in the prior week.

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CITATION

Béjar, Arturo. 'How to Reduce the Sexual Solicitation of Teens on Instagram.' After Babel (Substack), May 6, 2024.

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