Social network Instagram is starting to use artificial intelligence to determine whether younger users are falsifying their age on the app, the company Meta, which owns the platform, announced today.
Meta has been using artificial intelligence for some time to determine the age of users of various applications, and Instagram will now, as stated, proactively search for accounts suspected of belonging to teenagers, who have an incorrectly entered or earlier date of birth when registering the account.
If a user is found to have falsified their age, the account will automatically be converted to a "teen account," which has more restrictions than an adult account.
Teenage accounts on Instagram are automatically locked, or private, which means that users can only follow those accounts if the owners allow them to do so by accepting a follow request, and the messages that the account owner receives are also protected, meaning they only receive messages from users they are already connected to on the app.
Content that is declared "sensitive", such as scenes of physical violence or promotion of plastic surgery, is also restricted, Meta said.
Teenagers will also receive notifications if they have spent more than an hour on the app, and a "sleep mode" has been established, which turns off notifications about incoming messages between 22 p.m. and XNUMX a.m. the next day and automatically replies to some of them.
Meta adds that the artificial intelligence that will be used for these purposes is trained to look for certain signals, such as the type of content that appears on the account and profile information to determine the age of its owner.
Social media companies are facing increasing scrutiny over the impact of apps like Instagram, X, and TikTok on the mental health of younger users.
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