Instagram ‘pushes weight-loss messages to teenagers’

Researchers find minimal interactions by teen users can trigger a deluge of thin-body and dieting images

Instagram's algorithms are pushing teenage girls who even briefly engage with fitness-related images towards a flood of weight-loss content, according to new research which aimed to recreate the experience of being a child on social networks.

Researchers adopting mystery shopper" techniques set up a series of Instagram profiles mirroring real children and followed the same accounts as the volunteer teenagers. They then began liking a handful of posts to see how quickly the network's algorithm pushed potentially damaging material into the site's explore" tab, which highlights material that the social network thinks a user might like.