‘Red flags’: Why Sport Integrity Australia is concerned about social media, peptides and kids

November 10, 2026 — 7:28pmThe head of Australia’s anti-doping body fears a rise in performance-enhancing drug use in junior sport after new data found one in 20 junior athletes were involved in doping.The chief executive of Sport Integrity Australia Dr Sarah Benson said she was alarmed by the impact social media influencers were having in normalising peptide and drug use, especially among teenage boys.Her concerns come after the German documentary Doping (Kinder) found six per cent of minors had admitted to doping, which Benson said had raised a “red flag” with SIA.The documentary on German broadcaster ARD compiled 44 different surveys of junior athletes from 15 different countries and found between five and six per cent of junior athletes admitted to doping, or performance-enhancing drug use.Sarah Benson heads Sport Integrity Australia, which replaced the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.ARD and doping experts projected that would equate to more than 10 million children of the more than 200 million globally aged between eight and 17 who compete in organised sport.“It is an area of concern and focus for us,” Dr Benson said.“We are looking at ways to reach people at an earlier or younger age or an earlier pathway in their sporting career, so that they’re aware of things like competition manipulation, so they’re aware of some of these emerging risks with supplements and peptides.“So whilst they might not be elite at the age of 10, 11 or 12, certainly, those 12, 13-year-old boys - and particularly boys – are heavily influenced by what they’re seeing online.“Whilst we look at doping in the context of the World Anti-Doping Code, it is quite a specific definition, and it is to get a performance-enhancing edge, and no doubt some children are using it to build muscle and a whole range of other things, endurance.“It is an alarming figure. Yes, it appears to be an extrapolation ... but I think it does paint a picture of the broader concern that we’ve had across society that there seems to be an increased prevalence through social media, online influences, and the availability of these substances. It has significantly expanded.”While the figures were an extrapolation to estimate a gross global number, a ratio of five to six per cent of junior athletes doping was a worrying figure for Australian sport, she said.“So whatever the figure, whether it is accurate or an overestimation, it’s still a significant concern for us. It does reflect where we’ve got our effort focused with respect to education,” she said.“Whilst we haven’t had positive tests, we have seen an increase in traffic to some of our websites that talk (ask) about health risks from certain peptides. We are seeing an increase in tip-offs come through to our hotline. So there’s a range of things that are happening that are sort of red flags for us and make us dig deeper.”SIA is debating how to manage further testing of junior athletes, how to establish authority to obtain a sample from a minor, in particular the difficult issue of finding the appropriate process for anti-doping sample collection given the intrusive nature of needing to witness a urine sample during collection.The need to better establish these procedures is acute, with the world coming to Brisbane in 2032 for the Olympics.“Whilst we haven’t had positive tests, we have seen an increase in traffic to some of our websites that talk (ask) about health risks from certain peptides. We are seeing an increase in tip-offs come through to our hotline. So there’s a range of things that are happening that are sort of red flags for us and make us dig deeper.”Dr Sarah BensonShe stressed education was critical, especially for minors, in understanding the misleading labelling of products may lead to positive tests, inadvertent or not.“There’s a whole range of risks. So the red flags are there for us, the broader societal figures are there, the tip-offs, the increased traffic to our website. So we are digging deeper. We are looking at how we reform our anti-doping testing with some targeted testing,” Dr Benson said.While there had not been positive tests among minors, the low number of tests done on minors was one of the reasons to explain this.“The operational data does not tell the full picture. There’s a whole range of reasons why an anti-doping test or doping testing program doesn’t tell the full picture,” Benson said.“Obviously, we only test, it will be around two per cent or less of our total test samples are minors obviously because minors are not represented in the population at the elite level.”Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletterFrom our partners