Lately, we have seen several major companies take the necessary steps to protect the interests of minors on the internet. Amongst these, the Facebook-owned social media giant Instagram has taken several measures to ensure the safety of under-18s on its platform. Now, users will need to add birthdays to their Instagram accounts to keep using the platform.
Add Your Birthday To Continue Using Instagram
The company announced two significant changes that will be introduced to its platform in the coming days. Pavni Diwanji, the VP of Youth Products at Instagram, wrote an in-depth blog post to introduce the features recently. So, as per the post, the company will now start asking users to add their birthdays to their Instagram accounts. Why, you ask? Well, the company says that it will not only get an idea of the user’s age but will also be able to curate content and ads based on that to deliver a better experience.
Prior to this, the company had implemented restrictions that prevent adult users to directly message under-18 accounts. Furthermore, starting last month, the company started to make new accounts of minors private by default.
“Add Your Birthday” on Instagram
Now, the company will ask users to add their birthdays to their Instagram profiles to get an idea of their age group. Initially, it will show a notification prompt to add birthdays on its app for users who have not added their birthdays previously. Upon ignoring the notification, the company will continue to deliver it until the user adds it to their profile.
Moreover, when viewing sensitive content on Instagram, users will get a similar “add birthday” prompt when they choose to watch a sensitive post. Although the company shows a sensitive-content-warning for such posts, it did not ask users to add their birthdays previously.
Instagram says that these new changes will allow it to improve the user experience and deliver relevant ads to under-18 users. Moreover, with these changes, the company will get an idea of the age of a user and will treat their account accordingly.
Now, users who choose to not comply with the new change will be continually asked to add the birth date. After a certain point, however, Instagram will prevent them to use its services until they add their birthday to their profiles. Plus, the company says that it is aware that people might give fake dates for their birthdays on the platform. So, it will implement new AI-based systems to determine the age of users by analyzing “Happy Birthday” posts on their profiles.
The company says that the new “add birthday” feature is currently rolling out to global users on Instagram. So, if you get a prompt to add your birthday on Instagram, be sure to add it before your account gets blocked.
