INSTAGRAM TESTS NEW AI TOOL TO CATCH TEENS PRETENDING TO BE ADULTS

In a bold move to make its platform safer for younger users, Instagram has announced that it’s testing a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to catch teenagers who lie about their age and pose as adults.

The social media giant, owned by Meta, says the AI technology will proactively find suspected teen users pretending to be older to access adult features on the platform and place those accounts under Instagram Teen Accounts settings. This is part of Instagram’s broader effort to create a safer, more age-appropriate experience for its younger audience. The AI-driven classification tool is currently being tested out only in the US.

Why It Matters

Teenagers lying about their age on social media isn’t exactly new. Many youngsters tweak their birth year during sign-up just to get around restrictions. This raised serious concerns among parents, educators, and child safety advocates, especially with issues like online grooming, exposure to harmful content, and mental health risks coming into play.

By introducing this AI tool, Instagram hopes to reduce those risks significantly. The company says it’s focusing on users who try to edit their birth date from under 18 to 18 or over, a red flag that someone might be trying to bypass safety controls.

How It Works

Instagram hasn’t shared all the technical details likely to prevent people from figuring out how to beat the system but it did say that the tool uses signals like user behavior, interactions, and possibly even facial analysis with permission to determine someone’s likely age. If the system suspects a user is underage, it may ask them to verify their identity in other ways.

For instance, Instagram is testing video selfies to verify age. Users might be asked to take a quick selfie video, which is then analyzed by a third-party AI to estimate their age based on facial features. Instagram says the data is deleted after verification and not stored.

A Step Toward Safer Spaces

This new AI feature is part of Instagram’s bigger plan to build more age-appropriate spaces online. In recent years, Instagram has rolled out features like hiding direct messages from strangers for underage users and limiting the kind of ads shown to teens.

The platform is also working on age-specific experiences, think different privacy settings, content recommendations, and controls for teens versus adults. And if this AI test proves successful, we could see it rolled out more widely across Meta platforms, including Facebook and Threads.

What Critics Say

While many welcome the move, some critics raise concerns about privacy and accuracy. How well can AI truly guess someone’s age? And will there be false positives? Instagram insists that user privacy remains a top priority and that any age checks involving AI are secure and temporary.

Final Word

In a digital world where age can be faked with a few keystrokes, Instagram’s new AI tool is the game-changer for online safety. Whether it becomes the gold standard or just a stepping stone, it’s clear that tech companies are being pushed to take more responsibility for protecting their young or rather teens users and Instagram seems ready to step up.