Instagram supposedly requires children to be 13 to create an account but in reality lots of younger kids lie to get on the site. Their goal is to become an influencer, someone who makes a living from the platform by gaining lots of followers. On Instagram in particular, this means posting lots of images, often of a sexualized nature.
This turns out to be a business model which attracts a lot of adult men, not only as customers but as photographers and social media experts. An investigation by the NY Times found many of the men volunteering for these jobs have a background as pedophiles.
The Times viewed thousands of Instagram accounts and tracked months of conversations by professed pedophiles on Telegram. Reporters also examined thousands of pages of police reports and court records and interviewed nearly 200 people associated with the child-influencer…
