Instagram is announcing that its app will start asking users for their birthdays, if they haven’t shared this information with the Facebook-owned company yet.
By knowing how old all of its users are, Instagram says that it will be able to create new safety features for the large number of young people who use the social network.
As recent examples of Instagram’s ongoing efforts to protect children, in March of 2021 the app was modified to prevent adult users from messaging those who are under 18 and not following them, and in July, Instagram started setting new accounts to private by default, if they belong to people under the age of 16.
Anyone can set their Instagram account to private at any time too, and in doing so, one’s posts and followers can only be seen by other individuals if they get permission from the account holder first.
In any case, Instagram asking for users’ birthdates will also be used to restrict what promoted posts users under 18 will see, and of course, it will be used to show more relevant ads.
If you don’t share your birthday – no more Instagram
In its announcement, Instagram makes the following statement, pointing out that giving your birthday to the network will not be optional:
“First, we’ll start to ask you for your birthday when you open Instagram. We’ll show you a notification a handful of times and if you haven’t provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you’ll need to share it to continue using Instagram. This information is necessary for new features we’re developing to protect young people.”
Users who haven’t provided a birthday may also be requested to add one if they stumble upon content Instagram considers “sensitive or graphic”, just in case those users are minors.
And in order to address the obvious flaw in this plan – users giving fake birthdates, Instagram notes that it will be using artificial intelligence to estimate everyone’s age based on their posts. And if the AI decides that someone is older than they claim to be – that user will be asked to verify their age. Instagram will provide us with more information on how this will work soon, stay tuned.
