The Role of Social Media, Messaging Apps, and Search Engines in Minors’ Exposure to Adult Content

When lawmakers and regulators debate how to restrict minors’ access to pornography, they often focus narrowly on adult websites. But mounting research from around the world shows that this approach misses the bigger picture. Today’s teens are far more likely to encounter explicit content through everyday platforms—social media feeds, group chats, messaging apps, and search engines—than they are by visiting traditional adult sites.

Adult Content on Social Media

A growing body of research shows that social media platforms are a major way teens are exposed to pornography—often more so than dedicated adult websites.

• A survey of 16- and 17-year-olds in the United Kingdom found that 63% had seen pornography on social media platforms.¹

• Research by regulators in Australia found that young people access pornography both intentionally and unintentionally across several platforms: 70% on pornography websites, but also 35% through social media feeds, 28% via ads on social media, 22% through direct messages, and 17% through group chats and private groups.²

• Teens most commonly reported seeing pornography on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok.³

A survey commissioned by the Children’s Commissioner for England highlighted just how prevalent this is:

• 41% of teens who had seen pornography online said they first viewed it on Twitter—more than those who first saw it on dedicated pornography sites (37%) or other social media platforms like Instagram (33%) and TikTok (23%).⁴

• The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) also found that minors often encountered pornography through Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter, and that 44% of minors who sought out explicit content did so on social media.⁵

Younger teens seem even more likely to encounter explicit material this way. A report from Common Sense Media found that among teens who had sought out pornography, 38% found it on social media—with 49% of 13- to 14-year-olds encountering it there compared to 32% of older teens.⁶

Despite this reality, many U.S. laws designed to limit minors’ access to pornography specifically exclude social media companies. For example, the leading sponsor of one of West Virginia’s bills told reporters that the law only applies to sites where at least 33% of the content is harmful to minors is meant to "act as a buffer" for social media websites that host adult content, but pornography is not the "intent of the website." "That protects us from having to go after, you know, requiring social media companies to require the same type of verification that you would of Pornhub or something like that," he said.⁷

Messaging Apps: A Growing Risk

Beyond social media feeds, messaging apps like Discord, Telegram, and WhatsApp have become major venues for teens’ exposure to explicit material.

These apps allow public multi-user channels—similar to 1990s-style chat rooms—and some have been linked to troubling patterns:

• Discord has been identified as a particularly concerning platform for minors’ exposure to pornography.⁸

• Investigations have found that YouTube creators use Telegram to distribute adult content, with some channels having over 650 members sharing explicit material.⁹

A 2023 survey of U.S. minors aged 9–17, conducted by Thorn,¹⁰ found significant levels of sexual interaction on these platforms:

These numbers suggest that even though fewer minors overall use Telegram compared to Discord or WhatsApp, those who use it daily are much more likely to experience sexual interactions.

Search Engines: A Primary Gateway

Search engines are another major way minors encounter pornography—often intentionally.

According to the British Board of Film Classification, 53% of minors who sought out pornography did so through an image or video search engine, compared to 43% who went directly to adult websites.¹¹

Similarly, a 2021 survey of UK 16- and 17-year-olds found that 51% had seen pornography while using a search engine.¹²

This suggests that while regulators often focus on adult sites, many minors first encounter pornography through simple searches on everyday platforms like Google or Bing—sometimes without even intending to.

Conclusion

The research makes clear that teens’ exposure to pornography happens across a wide range of digital platforms—many of which were designed for general use, not for adult entertainment. Social media, messaging apps, and search engines play a far larger role in how minors encounter adult content than many laws and policies currently acknowledge. As policymakers consider new regulations, understanding where and how minors actually access explicit material is critical for creating solutions that match today’s online reality.

Sources

1. Neil Thurman and Fabian Obster, The Regulation of Internet Pornography: What a Survey of Under-18s Tells Us about the Necessity for and Potential Efficacy of Emerging Legislative Approaches (Policy & Internet 13, no. 3 [2021]: 415–432). https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.250.

2. eSafety Commissioner, Roadmap for Age Verification and Complementary Measures to Prevent and Mitigate Harms to Children from Online Pornography (Canberra: Australian Government, 2023), https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/Roadmap-for-age-verification_2.pdf.

3. eSafety Commissioner, Accidental, Unsolicited and in Your Face: Young People’s Encounters with Online Pornography—A Matter of Platform Responsibility, Education and Choice (Canberra: Australian Government, 2023), https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/Accidental-unsolicited-and-in-your-face.pdf.

4. U.K. Children’s Commissioner, “A Lot of It Is Actually Just Abuse”: Young People and Pornography (London: U.K. Children’s Commissioner, 2023), https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2023/02/cc-a-lot-of-it-is-actually-just-abuse-young-people-and-pornography-updated.pdf.

5. Revealing Reality, Young People, Pornography & Age-Verification (London: British Board of Film Classification, 2020), https://www.revealingreality.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/BBFC-Young-people-and-pornography-Final-report-2401.pdf.

6. Michael B. Robb and Supreet Mann, Teens and Pornography (San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2023), https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/teens-and-pornography.

7. Leah Willingham, “West Virginia Advances Bill That Would Require Age Verification for Internet Pornography,” Associated Press, February 4, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-pornography-age-verification-7685469951192ce3ad29cd98b03a3b20.

8. Bark, “What Is Discord and Is It Safe? A Discord App Review for Parents,” May 16, 2023, https://www.bark.us/app-reviews/apps/discord/.

9. Aakash Sharma and Subham Tiwari, “Vlog on YouTube, Porn on Telegram: Inside the World of India’s Dark Creators,” India Today, September 27, 2024, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/vlog-youtube-porn-telegram-inside-the-world-of-indias-dark-creators-family-vlogs-paid-subscribers-2607576-2024-09-2

10. Thorn, Youth Perspectives on Online Safety, 2023 (2024), https://info.thorn.org/hubfs/Research/Thorn_23_YouthMonitoring_Report.pdf.

11. Thurman and Obster, The Regulation of Internet Pornography.

12. Revealing Reality, Young People, Pornography & Age-Verification.