Report finds explicit content routinely shown to 13-year-olds on X
Report finds explicit content routinely shown to 13-year-olds on X
Campaigners demand X strengthens safeguards after a CCDH study shows 13-year-olds repeatedly encounter explicit material and adult-led communities.
A new report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate exposes worrying gaps in safety safeguards on X that could expose minors to sexually explicit material. Researchers created two UK-based accounts posing as a 13-year-old boy and girl to test how the platform handles searches, recommendations, and communities. Their findings show a troubling pattern of exposure to explicit content, calling into question how well the platform protects younger users.
When researchers tested the search bar with terms a curious teenager might use — such as sex, porn, boobs, and hentai — 80% of the returned results included explicit material, with such content appearing within the first ten results containing media. The study also found that age verification, content warnings, or filtering steps did not intervene between the teen accounts and explicit material.
After these explicit searches, the study reports the For You algorithm altered the feed to surface more graphic content, with about 30.5% of recommended posts being explicit. The accounts were also able to join 15 out of 20 adult sexual communities, including groups with overtly sexual content and transactional posts. Community names cited in the report include themes like “Virgin Trades,” “Onlyfans virgin club +18,” and “Kink Kings & Queens.”
The researchers tested whether participation in these communities would lead to direct contact between adults and teenagers, noting that likes and engagement in such spaces could potentially enable inappropriate interactions. The findings underscore a broader concern: insufficient safeguards and weak enforcement that allow under-16 users to encounter sexually explicit material and adult-led spaces.
Campaigners are calling on X to take immediate responsibility to protect children online, tighten age checks, improve content filtering, and remove or restrict access to explicit material for under-18 users. The report adds to ongoing debates in the UK about how tech platforms should regulate content and protect younger users from online harms, especially in the absence of robust, consistently applied safeguards.
