Sickening proof that Instagram is STILL in the frame
Self-harm, anorexia, suicide — six weeks after the social media giant pledged to block damaging posts like those blamed for Molly’s death . . .
THe image is plain — a black-and-white photo of a razor blade — and the words scrawled underneath, in a childish hand, are alarming. They read: ‘Best friend forever.’
But it’s the comment beside the image, written by the young woman who uploaded it to her Instagram page, that is truly chilling. ‘I used my best friend today,’ it says, next to a sad-face emoticon, adding ‘I’m sry’ [sorry].
As a parenting author and the mother of two teenage girls, I wish that was the only terrifying image I’d seen this week on the photo-sharing social media platform, which has more than 17 million British users.
Far from it. In fact, this was one of the least disturbing of several thousand harmful Instagram posts I saw within a few hours.
The posts were nearly all of teenagers relentlessly inciting each other to cut or starve themselves, or to commit suicide. And I saw these images more than six weeks after Instagram pledged a full and immediate crackdown on self-harm and suicide content. The promise came in response to the suicide of 14-year-old Molly russell, after her heartbroken father Ian said the site had been partly culpable in encouraging her to take her life.
When Molly’s family looked at her Instagram account, they found distressing material about depression and suicide.
After Ian russell’s remarks, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri admitted on February 7: ‘We are not where we need to be on self-harm and suicide, and we need to do more to protect the most vulnerable in our community.
‘We will not allow any graphic images of selfharm, such as cutting, on Instagram . . . We will also make it harder for people to discover nongraphic, self-harm-related content and we won’t be recommending it. We are not removing non-graphic self harm-related content from Instagram entirely, as we don’t want to stigmatise or isolate people who may be in distress.’
After the comments from Molly’s father, I did an audit of Instagram and was shocked at the images I found. So, six weeks on, I returned to the site to see if the pledge had been honoured. I hoped that the firm had acted on its promise and the most easily visible material would now be absent.
Yet, it was clear that, even if the posts I had originally flagged up to Instagram had been removed, plenty more had since sprung up in their place.
Such images continue to be a risk to vulnerable young people. Indeed, our findings have added weight to calls for social media giants to be independently regulated.
The NSPCC has already drawn up proposals for a watchdog to force such networks to protect children — a move supported by nine out of ten parents.
On seeing the images that the Mail gathered this week, Martha Kirby, the NSPCC’s policy manager for child safety online, said: ‘ This is something we would expect to be improving. That these images are still up there, and are so easily found, is of great concern.
‘Instagram should remove that content as quickly as it can, in line with its own terms and conditions. This clearly contravenes its own community guidelines.’
In response, Instagram says it has now ‘removed all violating self-harm and eating disorder content that was flagged to us by the Daily Mail’.
Tara Hopkins, the company’s head of public policy, said: ‘We do not allow content that encourages or promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders and we will remove it as soon as we are made aware of it, through a combination of in-app reporting and proactive technologies we use to detect it.’
SHeadded: ‘We know many people use Instagram in a positive way to get support or support others, so we do allow content that discusses suicide, self-harm or eating disorders for the purpose of recovery.
‘We recently updated our policies to no longer allow graphic selfharm content, such as cutting, in any circumstances, and we are making adjustments to our eating disorder policies to classify more as promotion, so more is removed.
‘We are committed to removing this type of content, but it will take time while we build new technology to find it and stop it being recommended. We are working with youth and mental health experts on any changes, to help ensure we get it right.’
While Instagram has made progress in removing self-harm posts, blocking some hashtags and stopping selfharm being recommended in its explore feature, as our investigation shows it’s clear the social media giant needs to think about removing all such content entirely.
Here, we reveal some of the dangerous material we could still find online this week . . .
PRO-ANOREXIC ‘SKELETAL’ POSTS
WHeN I first typed ‘#anorexia’ into Instagram, a warning message popped up, giving me a choice of whether to continue. However, experts say most young people will click straight past this.
When they do, one of the first images to appear is a mirror selfie of a painfully thin girl in her underwear, captioned with hashtags to find further ‘inspirational’ material.
Another popular hashtag is #bonespiration. Six weeks ago, it brought up 3,714 images. When I looked this time, that had increased to 3,798.
As before, there are dozens of young girls sharing photos of their skeletal bodies as they encourage each other to get the most emaciated look. The most popular show girls with twiglike legs and gaping thigh gaps.
Clicking on one takes me to the page of a young girl whose biography contains her current weight and goal weight of 45kg (7st). She lists one of her preoccupations as ‘fasting’.
Next to one picture, posted this month, of young girls with their ribcages sticking out over concave stomachs, she asks for an ‘ ana buddy’ so they can encourage each other to lose more weight. Six of her followers volunteer.
There is also plenty of advice on how to achieve a skeletal look, with messages such as: ‘Because the pain of looking in the mirror hurts more than starving.’
Psychologist Deanne Jade, of the National Centre for eating Disorders, is unequivocal about the harm such images do.
She says: ‘I recently saw a young woman who can no longer go to university because she was influenced into self-harming and toxic eating behaviour as a result of being goaded by Instagram feeds.
‘Another girl was taking part in an Instagram weight-loss contest. She told the therapist she had no desire to recover.
‘It’s up to Instagram to adjust the material it delivers to people who appear interested in feeds such as that. Unless something is done to force these people to clean up their act, it’s parents, schools and the health profession that have to pick up the pieces.’
Sharon Pursey, of the safety app SafeToNet, says online self-harm and weight-loss messages are even more dangerous when viewed on Instagram: ‘It is more of a trusted environment, so it subliminally reinforces their thoughts,’ she says. ‘Comments and “likes” by others also help to give these posts credibility.’
Since we alerted Instagram this week, it says it has blocked the hashtag #bonespiration and a range of others like it, so that such images are no longer easily found.
SELF-HARM IS DEPICTED AS THE NORM
THere has been a dramatic rise in recent years in the number of adolescent girls self-harming.
According to figures published in respected medical journal The BMJ, between 2011 and 2014 there was a 68 per cent increase in reports of selfharm among girls aged 13 to 16.
This coincided with a rapid rise in the popularity of social media.
While the hashtag # selfharm no longer brought up any results in the search bar, a similar search
— which the Mail is choosing not to publish — offered dozens of suggestions as to where such content could be found.
One popular alternative hashtag yields more than half a million posts. Among them is a photo of bloody letters on a tile wall, spelling the words: ‘They don’t care.’
Another profile, active since 2014, has 704 followers. All the 560 posts show black-and-white pictures depicting bleeding cuts, nooses and quotes about self-harm.
The comments on them demonstrate how such images inspire others. Next to a shot of a girl’s thighs criss-crossed with cuts are comments such as: ‘My aim’ , ‘my goals’ and ‘I’ll do it too then.’
Professor of social psychology Sonia Livingstone, one of the UK’s leading experts on children and their social media use, says the sheer volume of such messages puts viewers ‘in a weird bubble where it feels like everyone is self-harming and it’s normal’.
She adds: ‘They also make it harder for kids to ask for help because they want everyone to stay with them. The message is: “No one understands you — but we do.” ’
SUICIDE ‘MADE TO LOOK LIKE A VALID OPTION’
IT’S not just cutting that such Instagram posts recommend. It is also suicide. Indeed, suicide is presented as the ‘logical’ next step from self-harm — a particularly concerning message given that the teenage suicide rate has almost doubled in eight years, according to government statistics.
A study reported in The BMJ found that young people who have self-harmed were 17 times more likely to kill themselves.
Six weeks after Instagram vowed to remove them, there are still hundreds of easily findable images encouraging young people to take their lives. They include a photo of red lettering, reading: ‘Aren’t the dead beautiful in their stillness?’
Another post reads: ‘I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to cut, I want to die.’
The sheer volume of material is terrifying. Images range from TV cartoon character Bart Simpson in the foetal position with the words: ‘Oh God, I’m gonna die alone,’ to a young man posing with a pistol under his chin and the caption: ‘Stop this pain.’ Another picture shows an inner arm with a vertical dotted line and horizontal ones, forming sections labelled ‘hospital’ and ‘morgue’.
Dr Angharad Rudkin, a clinical psychologist, says such material preys on a teenager at the most vulnerable time of their life. ‘Thinking about death has always been a part of teenage development,’ she says. ‘In the past, they might have written about it in their diaries. But now, there’s so much talk about it online that it makes suicide look like a valid option.
‘Because this material gives out messages that “no one cares” and that “adults don’t understand”, it encourages young people not to get help or support.’
DISTURBINGLY GRAPHIC SCENES
EVEN discounting the images of self-harm, there is no shortage of graphic content on Instagram, from people falling to their deaths from high buildings to medical pictures of dismembered hands.
The main go-to page, followed by 1.8 million people, is run by a U.S. autopsy assistant. The account was previously deleted due to concerns relatives might recognise dismembered body parts of their loved ones, but it has reappeared.
This week, the feed included an image of the blood-soaked pillow of an elderly man who didn’t want to go into a nursing home.
A ‘SHOP WINDOW’ FOR DRUGS
YOUNG people who want to buy drugs no longer necessarily need contacts in the underworld.
Instead, Instagram offers a shop window for dealers and even shows them how to make their own formulations. Many pages feature cannabis being produced on an industrial scale under artificial lights, processed and bagged.
Six weeks ago, the Mail reported images and short video clips that showed how to make a dangerous new ‘cocktail’ called Purple Drank. While the original hashtags used to find them are gone, multiple variations have popped up in their place, showing how the drink can be prepared from codeine, a painkiller, mixed with fizzy drinks.
In fact, the ‘cocktail’ is addictive and can trigger potentially fatal breathing problems — and this material violates Instagram’s own terms on drugs. Alongside the images are offers to sell the ingredients needed, as well as potentially addictive sedatives that can also create euphoria, but may be fatal if taken with alcohol.
Yet all this is openly available for delivery with tracking numbers — to ensure safe arrival.
For confidential support, visit samaritans.org or call the Samaritans free on 116 123.
TaniTh Carey is the author of What’s My Child Thinking? Practical Child Psychology For Modern Parents (DK, £16.99).