New Delhi: Instagram is introducing a major change to improve the safety of young users. On Monday, Meta announced the global rollout of its AI-powered age-guessing technology. The tool will identify teenagers who misrepresent their age and automatically move them into more restricted profiles known as “Teen Accounts”.
Many young users enter false adult birth dates while creating accounts to avoid strict rules. With the new technology, Meta’s AI will actively scan profiles to identify users it suspects are teenagers, even if their listed birth date indicates that they are adults.
How Does The AI Guess A User’s Real Age?
To determine whether a user is a teenager, Meta’s AI examines their entire profile for possible clues. It checks posts, comments, bios and captions for references to school grades or birthday celebrations. The company also uses visual indicators from photos and videos, including a person’s height and bone structure.
What Changes With Teen Accounts?
Once the AI identifies a user as a teenager, their profile is moved to a more restricted experience. The account is set to private by default, while harmful comments are automatically hidden. Teenagers will also receive direct messages only from people they already follow or are connected to.
These accounts also have built-in time limits, reminding users to close the app after 60 minutes of daily use. Notifications are muted between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. to support better sleep. Users under 16 cannot turn off these strict settings without direct permission from a parent.
Why Is Meta Doing This Now?
The global rollout comes just months after Meta agreed to a major settlement in August. The company reached agreements worth up to USD 18 billion with nearly every US state and territory. These agreements were aimed at resolving lawsuits filed by 52 bipartisan attorneys general, who alleged that Meta’s platforms were harming teenagers.
In a recent blog post, Meta said that, as part of this agreement, it is investing in stronger technology to identify accounts belonging to children under 13 and safely place older teenagers in age-appropriate spaces.
To explain these new protections, Meta will also begin showing an in-feed video to parents in the US directly on the Instagram app.
Coming To Facebook And Threads
Instagram is not the only platform receiving the update. Meta said it is continuing to roll out the same AI age-detection technology on Facebook and plans to introduce a similar global rollout for Threads later this year.
