Be a parent, not a pimp.

It is no secret that I am active on Instagram. @foodieExhalingLife on IG is the only social media account I have. I am not on Facebook, X, Thread as much as IG tries to coerce me onto it, and TikTok. I don't have multiple accounts, like private and public. @foodieExhalingLife is a public account. Am I a Digital Creator? No. It is just my iPhone and thumbs doing the work to share life, not something made up for content, but sharing snippets of me and life. 

I spend about an hour or so every week, reporting, deleting, and blocking supposedly men on Instagram. I've become quite efficient at it. It is a small, yet annoying, price to pay for having a public account. Despite minimizing its impact, I have wondered about young girls on social media. Are we expecting girls as young as 13 years old to handle sexually aggressive messages, photographs of genitalia (aka dick pics), and links to porn sites? How about those who try to lure you with nauseating sweet talks? Oh and my favorite with a large dose of sarcasm! When they offer to send money every week with nothing in return except chatting with them. Really? 

When I read The Wall Street Journal's His Job Was to Make Instagram Safe for Teens. His 14-Year-Old Showed Him What the App was Really Like months ago, I was disappointed by Meta's lack of action. How many of us think of Instagram as a known hunting ground for pedophiles and sexual predators? I get that Meta, Instagram's mothership, runs a multi-billion dollar business and not a daycare for young girls. Meta's projected revenue for this year is 59.6 billion dollars. Any meaningful action that will drastically drop the number of users and decrease engagement rates could adversely impact their revenue. 

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Mark Zuckerberg didn't sign up to be the protector of children from pedophiles and sexual predators when he bought Instagram for $1 Billion back in 2012. He bought it to make more money. I think we all understand that. 

Let's be real. It is the parents' job, not Meta's, to educate children about pedophiles and sexual predators on social media and ensure that their children's Instagram accounts are private. Responsible parenting means actively being involved in their children's lives and that should include their social media accounts, right? So those IG algorithms continue to push young girls' photos and videos to adult men who engage with them. If you've ever liked a reel with puppies because you love dogs... Imagine a predator's feed after he clicks a "like" on a post with a girl in her swimsuit. Simply put, IG's algorithm creates a feed curated to satisfy the sexual fantasies of predators. 

Is it Meta's responsibility to keep children safe from pedophiles and sexual predators? Corporate responsibilities, social ethics, and simple human decency should hold Meta responsible for protecting children from pedophiles and sexual predators on its social media, but is it their responsibility alone when parents expose their children to pedophiles and sexual predators? 

Don't parents have a greater responsibility to keep their children away from sexual predators than Instagram? It doesn't have to be your child's account. If you have a public account and see a jump in engagement when you share photos or videos of your child, you should check the demographic of those engaged. Don't think that your child's photos are safe from the eyes of pedophiles because they photoshop the photos to make them more enticing so they can be shared with other pedophiles.

While the minimum age to have an Instagram account in the United States is 13 years old, children under the age requirement can have parent-managed accounts according to The Wall Street Journal's The Influencer Is a Young Teenage Girl. The Audience is 92% Adult Men. Pimping is the word that lingered in my head as I read the article. I understand that the kids want to become influencers and the parents want to support them. Influencers receive sponsored products and earn money while getting attention and appraises. It is cool, right?

Parents who manage their young, some younger than 13 years old, daughters' accounts and know that the majority of the followers are adult men, the majority of paid subscribers for exclusive content are adult men, and the photos and videos of their children are being exchanged between men on Telegram with "painfully explicit" comments about their sexual interest won't shut down the accounts. 

Instagram has a policy that does not allow child-focused accounts to offer subscriptions although if and how they are enforcing it is uncertain. At the time The Influencer Is a Young Teenage Girl. The Audience is 92% Adult Men was published, Instagram was working to enforce the policy. That is a lot more than what these parents on Instagram are doing to protect their children from becoming sexual fantasies. 

It seems like the parents just shrug so their children can remain influencers. Just as Instagram will not shut down adult accounts with questionable engagement on child-focused content to protect children from pedophiles and sexual predators, parents don't report, delete, and block because that will hurt their engagement rates and thus decrease sponsorship opportunities and income. Apparently, the pedophiles bring high engagement by looking at posts (photos and videos) longer, and with likes, comments, and direct messages. 

I'm not conservative when it comes to sex and the business of it. I believe in the legalization of prostitution with regulations to protect sex workers and a minimum age restriction for workers to be at least 21 years old and not 18. I would prefer it to be older than 21 for all sex workers including stripping and adult films, but I will save that for another time.  

Having said that, anyone who profits from the exploitation of minors, including aiding in sexual fascination, should be criminally held accountable in my opinion. Once it becomes known that a child has become a subject of sexual fascination and a person continues to aid in that fascination by providing photographs and videos, then isn't that person responsible for encouraging pedophilia fantasies regardless of their intentions? Even their intentions should be examined. When parents know that their children are being exposed to sexual predators and they continue to provide the means (photographs and videos) for their children to remain subjects of sexual fascination among the predators, then aren't they responsible for making their children sexual subjects? 

And what happens when a predator decides to turn his fascination into real life? Isn't the parent then criminally culpable for having encouraged the fascination? 

We can't just hold Instagram accountable when parents knowingly expose their children to pedophiles and sexual predators. When parents sell images of their children as subscriptions on Instagram to adult men knowing what that likely means... When they won't report, delete, and block for a higher engagement rate... They are pimping out their daughters for financial gain.

It is immoral. Photographs and videos that provide sexual fantasy or gratification... Isn't that porn? When you financially gain by providing sexual fantasy or gratification, isn't that the business of sex, even when the financial gain is indirect? These parents are pimping their children for influencer status. When did it become okay for parents to knowingly expose their children to likely pedophiles and sexual predators?