Instagram is constantly working toward the protection of underage users on its platform. The company recently rolled out a Teen Account feature for users under 16 with built-in protection to restrict the contact shown to teens and who can contact them. The company is now developing an AI-powered tool to catch teens trying to change their age.
Instagram’s AI-Backed Adult Classifier Tool
Currently, teens can lie about their age by self-reporting a false birthday. This allows young users to skirt the age restrictions imposed by teen accounts and get access to explicit content. With the new AI-powered adult classifier tool, the social media platform plans to catch teens lying about their age and stop them before any mishap happens.
Instagram’s AI tool will classify users in two brackets – under 18 and over 18 based on the account data. The adult classifier tool has been trained to analyse users’ profiles, follower lists, and content they interact with to determine age. Moreover, the tool will also scan birthday posts in which users are tagged for more accurate age prediction.
Teenagers who try to make a new account with the same email ID but with a different birthday will automatically get flagged. Meta will also be able to see the unique device IDs of such teenagers. In case the birthdate is changed manually, formal IDs would be required.
Additionally, users under 18 can send a video selfie to Yoti, an age verification service that uses facial features to determine age. The company assures that the images and videos shared will be deleted by both Yoti and Instagram post verification.
If someone is wrongly tagged as a teenager, there will be an option to appeal to Instagram to remove the teen account status. However, the process is still under development.
