Instagram announced that it will now mandate age verification for everyone by asking them for their birthdays. Via using this feature, Instagram aims to know how old a person is. It will then block unsuitable content from being shown to the users who are under 18 years of age.
Instagram Age Verification
Instagram made the announcement through a blog post that it has started asking people to share their birthday if they haven’t shared it previously. The App will keep showing the prompt at the top of the user’s feed to enter their birth date. After a certain point, if the user fails to enter the details, the app will stop working for them.
“This information is necessary for new features we’re developing to protect young people”, says Instagram. Additionally, if you see warning screens placed on the posts, Instagram will again ask you for your birthday for age verification before you can see the post.
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Currently, these screens can be bypassed by clicking on the ‘See Image’ or ‘See Video’ button. Instagram also says that it recognises that some people may give them the wrong birthday. The company is developing new systems to prevent it.
Instagram also told that it is using artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts. In the future, it will use this technology to determine and verify the correct age of the person.
If it doesn’t match with the information provided by the person itself, Instagram will ask the person to verify the age through multiple options. This work is still in the early stages, and the company will be sharing more soon.
To make Instagram a safer place for Teens, it recently introduced a feature which prevents adults from sending messages to people under 18 years of age who don’t follow them.