Shark-Infested Digital Waters
No Hype... Why We Don't Celebrate Meta's Removal of Sexual Predators
The Rundown↓
KNOW that Meta announced new Instagram Teen Account safety features and released stats on the recent removal of suspected “harmful accounts.”
REALIZE that removed accounts came from those targeting “adult-managed accounts featuring children under 13.”
EXPLORE our article on Meta’s Prior Predator Problem.
Details↓
In addition to an existing location notice that informs teens when a DM might be from a user in a different country, yesterday Meta announced more new safety features for DMs on Instagram Teen Accounts:
Now, teens will see new options to view safety tips and block an account, as well as the month and year the account joined Instagram, all prominently displayed at the top of new chats.
Meta also released data related to Instagram safety features. They stated 99% of all users have kept their nudity protection feature on, with “over 40% of blurred images received in DMs stayed blurred.” They also reported removing 135,000 Instagram accounts for “sexualized comments or requesting sexual images from adult-managed accounts featuring children under 13.”
Commentary↓
As we discovered through testimony in Meta’s antitrust trial in May, accounts with predatory behavior toward kids and teens have flooded Instagram. By their own accounts, their first major attempts to thwart predators started in 2018/19, six years after acquiring the platform.
In early 2025, Meta also removed another 500,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts connected to the original 135,000 banned Instagram accounts. That’s on top of statistics from a December 2023 press release:
From August 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023, we disabled more than 2.6 million accounts for violating our child sexual exploitation policies.
While we acknowledge Meta continues to make strides in protecting its youngest users, it’s seems odd to frame these statistics as some sort of pat-on-the-back victory lap. When I read press releases like this, I don’t think, “Well done, Meta.” I wonder, “Why on earth are we throwing minors into shark-infested waters?”
The reality is that predators come with the social media territory (Read Social Media is Not What You Think). These online dangers have been bizarrely normalized to the point of celebrating how many sharks have been removed from waters where minors are marketed to swim and designed to remain.
Tech companies try to convince us their intentionally designed attention-driven waters are our natural habitat, but humans are designed to dwell in the real world, not the digital. Since sexual predators have laid claim to this territory, maybe it would be easier to stop inserting minors into the water rather than celebrating the removal of an endless supply of sharks.
Postscript↓
Driver’s Training for Social Media is accessible to “Behind the Curtains” annual subscribers. What’s included in the online course?
Four Modules with Twelve Videos
Reflection/Discussion Questions
Action Ideas and Additional Links and Resources
Printable Companion Guide with a Screen Time Tracker, Case Study Activity, and Media Plan.