India*, an executive assistant in London in her 30's, is one of the people who has been actively lobbying for these changes. We use artificial intelligence technology and reports from our community to keep child exploitation off Instagram.” The spokesperson added: “We prohibit content and accounts that put young people in danger. A spokesperson for Facebook (which owns Instagram) told us: “Now, we're offering a new option for people to report entire accounts that might endanger children”. Previously this reporting option existed solely in the nudity category. Reported accounts are flagged as a priority to a child safety specialist. It allows users to report content that involves a child. Two months after a Glamour UK investigation revealed that child predators were harvesting images of kids on Instagram, the platform has introduced a new child safety feature. And the platforms are beginning to take notice. What happened to Krystal and her daughter is something that parents have become increasingly aware of and experts and activists are vociferously highlighting. ![]() “Some accounts are initially set up to look legit and a part of the gymnast community, but they are really lurkers who just watch and don’t post,” adds Krystal. She also decided to regularly go back in to check her follower list, closely inspecting the profile photo, posts and looking at who else they’re following. Krystal’s new policy was to vet every single account before accepting them. “If people really want to follow they can send another request.” Sure enough the requests started coming back in. I literally just sat there tapping, tapping, tapping. That night she sat for 24 hours and removed every single one of the 17,000 followers on her daughter’s page. Krystal took screenshots and alerted the police immediately about the images that had been stolen. “The comments on the photo were shocking and I recognised images of other kids from the dance world on there too.” ![]() “It was a photo of Edie in a pink leotard taken from the days before the Instagram account was private,” says Krystal. In June 2020 she found out that an image of her daughter had been published on a Russian porn website. And when notifications came in I couldn’t see all the individual likes and comments because of the size of the account.” About a year ago a friend suggested that the account should be private because of child safety concerns so Krystal went about changing the settings and removing any followers that she thought seemed ‘dodgy’. “I didn’t know that when you set it up it’s immediately open. “I was quite naive at the time,” admits Krystal. ![]() The account quickly grew to 17,000 followers and Krystal’s daughter (now 11) excelled in her sport to become an elite gymnast, so things were progressing nicely. When 35-year-old Krystal* in Somerset opened up an Instagram account in 2015 to document her then 6-year-old daughter Edie’s journey of learning dance and gymnastics she had no idea of the horrors that would transpire. ![]() But as Anne-Marie Tomchak reports, are we nonchalantly uploading content of our children having fun and ignoring the darker side of child safety issues that these social platforms present? TikTok and Instagram Reels are the social media platforms known for light-hearted dancing and memes that have brought an element of seemingly harmless fun into the dark days of Covid for many of us.
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