We found there had been some improvements, especially on Instagram, which didn’t show any potentially harmful content whatsoever this time.
Instagram’s Teen Accounts are now guided by PG-13 movie ratings to help protect under-18s.
However, on TikTok, the girls were still exposed to worrying content, mostly on the profile of 15-year-old Maya, who was repeatedly shown posts about bullying, children who had taken their own lives, people who were terminally ill and stories of women and children who had been violently abused by men.
While one or two posts like this might have gone unnoticed, the volume of them created a depressing sequence during a short 10-minute scroll.
The profile of Sophie, 15, saw some of this material but far less, and Aisha, 13, did not see much of concern.
