Facebook has announced that they are developing a safe space on Instagram for children under the age of 13: this restricted version of Instagram will protect children and pre-teens from online threats – including child predators.
Instagram’s under-13 platform is also equipped with a parental guide that allows parents to monitor their kids activities and to access “safety tools and privacy settings” : this guide was created by Instagram in collaboration with the US-based child welfare NGO The Child Mind Institute and Connect Safely.
Facebook is also working on a machine learning software that detects a user’s age upon signup.
According to current Instagram policy, children under the age of 13 are prohibited to use the platform: in the past, Facebook has expressed concern about children lying about their age when signing up and how difficult it is to track. The new AI technology will hopefully solve this issue and enable the under-13 Instagram platform to detect when a user does not meet the age limit.
Moreover, this new ‘age-appropriate’ platform will restrict adults from sending messages to below-18 users – and will instead notify them that ‘DM’ing is not an option’. It will also make it increasingly difficult for adults to find and interact with teens by not showing them in the “Suggested Users” list.
Moreover, Facebook has urged teenagers to make their accounts private: to facilitate this request, Instagram will now prompt users under the age of 18 to select if they want a public or private account during the sign-up process.
Vishal Shah – the Vice-President of Instagram – shared updates on Instagram’s mission to keep its under-18 users safe via Twitter:
Today we're sharing updates on our work to keep teens safe on Instagram. This includes restricting DMs between teens and adults they don’t follow, prompting teens to be careful in DMs and encouraging them to make their accounts private.
See details: https://t.co/BRbWoYyIiM pic.twitter.com/MmsJ9CESrN
— Vishal Shah (@vishalshahis) March 16, 2021
This is not the first time – however – that Facebook has released updates to ensure under-18 safety across its platforms. In 2017, Facebook launched Messenger Kids – which similarly focused on privacy and protecting children from online threats. Moreover, parents could control Messenger Kids from their own mobile phones and decide who their children could talk to and video chat with.
With that being said – Instagram’s new feature is set to officially go live in the next coming weeks!