Facebook & Instagram have stepped up their vigil to prevent children under the age of 13 from signing up. Facebook said among one of the measures was developing AI to “find & remove under aged accounts”, along with new solutions to verify people’s ages.
In an article by Pavni Diwanji, VP of Youth Products, Facebook, the social media network announced it was also building new experiences designed specifically for those under 13.
Instagram specifically said it was making 3 changes to make it more secure for youngsters. These included:
- Defaulting young people into private accounts.
- Making it harder for potentially suspicious accounts to find young people.
- Limiting the options advertisers have to reach young people with ads.
So starting this week, everyone who is under 16 years old (or under 18 in certain countries) will be defaulted into a private account when they join Instagram.
Private accounts let people control who sees or responds to their Content. If you have a private account, people have to follow you to see your posts, Stories & Reels unless you choose to allow others to reshare your Content. People also can’t comment on your Content in those places, & they won’t see your Content at all in places like Explore or hashtags.
Instagram claimed encouraging young people to have private accounts was “a big step in the right direction” when it came to stopping unwanted contact from adults. Also, it was taking more steps to make young people’s accounts difficult to find for certain adults.
Instagram said it had developed new technology that would allow it to find accounts that had shown potentially suspicious behavior, & stopped those accounts from interacting with young people’s accounts. “Potentially suspicious behavior”, meant accounts belonging to adults that may have recently been blocked or reported by a young person for example.
