Meta is using AI technology to search for kids who are lying about their age on Instagram in order to bypass safeguards, the company announced on Monday. When Meta finds an account that it suspects belongs to a teen, the platform will enroll them into a restricted Teen Account, even if the account lists an adult birthday.
Teen Accounts, which launched on Instagram last year, enroll young users into an app experience with built-in protections. The safeguards are applied to teens automatically, and limit who can contact a teen on the app and restrict the type of content the account holder can view. Teens under the age of 16 need their parents’ permission to change any of these settings.
Instagram has been using AI to determine age for quite some time, but now the social network confirms it’s using the technology to ensure that teens are accessing Instagram via a Teen Account rather than an adult one.
The company told TechCrunch last year that it had planned to do this, and noted that some of the ways it would find accounts that belong to teens who entered a fake adult birthday is by detecting happy birthday posts and receiving reports from other users.
Instagram says that it’s taking steps to ensure that its technology is accurate and that it’s correctly placing teens into Teen Accounts. However, in case the company does make a mistake, it’s giving people the option to change their settings.
“The digital world continues to evolve and we have to evolve with it,” the company wrote in its blog post. “That’s why it’s important that we work together with parents to make sure as many teens as possible have the protective settings that come with Teen Accounts.”
Instagram also announced that it’s going to begin sending notifications to parents that include information about how they can discuss the importance of providing the correct age online with their teens. The platform notes that one of the most important ways parents can make sure their teens are in protected accounts is to check if their account lists their correct birthday.
Today’s announcement comes two weeks after Meta introduced Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger.
Meta says it has enrolled at least 54 million teens into Teen Accounts globally so far, and that 97% of teens ages 13-15 have remained in these protected accounts.