Instagram algorithms feed 13-year-olds sexual videos, new data from The Wall Street Journal reveals.

Is anyone surprised? Certainly not this reporter.

Let’s break it down.

Background
In January, Meta announced all teen accounts would be automatically restricted to only age-appropriate content.

The special algorithms associated with teen accounts would filter out sexual content for users under 16 years old, the platform claimed, and make it impossible for underage users to search or view harmful content — even from users they follow.

Whereas teens could previously optout of these content settings, Meta made the strengthened content filters mandatory.

The Journal previously described this change as the “biggest change the tech giant has made to ensure younger users have a more age-appropriate experience on its social media sites.”

The Tests
The Journal teamed up with computer science professor Laura Edelson to determine whether Instagram’s age-based filters worked.

Between December 2023 and June 2024, the team created several test accounts — setting their age to 13 to trigger Instagram’s child protection measures.

In the movie Father of the Bride Part II, Martin Short’s wedding coordinator character Franck Eggelhoffer encounters George and Nina Banks (played by Steve Martin and Diane Keaton) outside their pediatrician’s office. Delighted to learn that both the Banks and their daughter are having a baby, the colorful Eggelhoffer offers to plan the shower.

“No more parties!” replies an exasperated Steve Martin, who was comically and financially challenged by Franck in the first film. “Not this time. No way. N. O.”

“Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you!” Eggelhoffer and his side kick, Howard Weinstein, begin to sing. “Party pooper! Party pooper! Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you, George Baaanks!”

This scene comes to mind as we kick off the summer of 2024, and as such publications as The New York Times leverage a current heat wave to try and advance their belief that a man-induced climate crisis is threatening our very existence. They’re the party poopers Eggelhoffer is warning us about.

“Well Beyond the U.S., Heat and Climate Extremes Are Hitting Billions,” headlines the Old Grey Lady.

Dig into the story and you read that 6.3 billion have lived through “at least a month” of “abnormally high temperatures.”

In other words, most of the people on earth have encountered a summer heat wave.

It’s nearing the end of June, which means the U.S. Supreme Court is busy issuing its final opinions before the month’s end.

But our nation’s highest court is also teeing up cases it will hear in its next term, beginning in October.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it will take up an important case next term. The court will decide whether it is constitutional for states to protect children from harmful and damaging transgender medical interventions — like puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries.

The question before the court is this:

“Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow ‘a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex’ or to treat ‘purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,’ … violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The case stems from Tennessee’s Help Not Harm law (SB 1) which restricts physicians from providing puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries to minors. The law is entitled the Prohibition on Medical Procedures Performed on Minors Related to Sexual Identity Act.

Tennessee’s governor signed the legislation on March 2, 2023; it took effect on July 1, 2023.

It is no secret that men are not doing well today.

They are falling behind women in nearly all important categories of life achievement. For instance, only four out of every 10 college students are male, but young men are three to four times more likely to spend any time behind bars compared to women.

Many thought leaders have offered various reasons for why men are falling behind. Scholars at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) suggest that most analysts are overlooking one of the most fundamental factors driving well-being outcomes for young men: whether or not he grows up in a thriving home with his own married mother and father or not.

A new IFS research brief concludes,

“The most striking finding is that young men from non-intact families are more likely to land in prison or jail than they are to graduate from college, whereas young men raised by their married fathers are significantly more likely to graduate from college than spend any time in prison/jail.”

This positive marriage factor is even more important and powerful than race or income.

These scholars add, “Social scientists generally find that children raised by their married, biological parents do better than those from non-intact families.” It is also true that “this relationship is found independent of race, gender, or income and applies to numerous outcomes (physical health, mental health, educational attainment, etc.).”