A study conducted in the United Kingdom has reportedly found that minors as young as 13 are being exposed to explicit sexual content on Elon Musk's social media platform X.
The research, carried out by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), examined how underage users interact with the platform and what content is recommended to them.
Researchers created two accounts posing as 13-year-old users and searched for commonly used terms such as “sex” and “porn” to assess content moderation.
The study found that eight out of ten searches resulted in posts classified as explicit under X’s own policies, including content depicting sexual acts, nudity and related material.
The platform’s recommendation system continued to surface similar content without additional searches, with 30.5% of posts shown to these accounts containing explicit material.
The report highlighted gaps in messaging controls for teenage users, which can be altered by users to receive unsolicited messages from adults.
The researchers found that the test accounts were able to join communities focused on sharing sexual content and were exposed to posts promoting pornography websites.
The CCDH stated that the exposure was driven in part by the platform’s algorithm and described the safeguards as insufficient, raising risks of exploitation and potential breaches of the Online Safety Act.
