How do i verify my age on instagram

Introducing New Ways to Verify Age on Instagram

Update on October 13, 2022: Starting today, we’re expanding this test to additional countries including India and Brazil. We plan to expand to the UK and EU before the end of the year. We’re also removing Social Vouching as an option to verify age from the test to make some improvements.

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We’re testing new options for people to verify their age on Instagram, allowing us to provide age-appropriate experiences.
In addition to providing an ID, people will now be able to ask others to vouch for their age, or use technology that can confirm their age based on a video selfie.
We’re partnering with Yoti, a company that specializes in privacy-preserving ways to verify age.

Starting today, we’re testing new options for people on Instagram to verify their age, starting with people based in the US. If someone attempts to edit their date of birth on Instagram from under the age of 18 to 18 or over, we’ll require them to verify their age using one of three options: upload their ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age. We’re testing this so we can make sure teens and adults are in the right experience for their age group. We are also partnering with Yoti, a company that specializes in online age verification, to help ensure people’s privacy.

In 2019, we began asking people to provide their age when signing up for Instagram. Since then, we've made this a requirement. Knowing people’s age allows us to provide appropriate experiences to different age groups, specifically teens.

We require people to be at least 13 years old to sign up for Instagram. In some countries, our minimum age is higher. When we know if someone is a teen (13-17), we provide them with age-appropriate experiences like defaulting them into private accounts, preventing unwanted contact from adults they don’t know and limiting the options advertisers have to reach them with ads.

Testing New Ways to Verify Age

In addition to having someone upload their ID, we’re testing two new ways to verify a person’s age:

Video Selfie: You can choose to upload a video selfie to verify your age. If you choose this option, you’ll see instructions on your screen to guide you. After you take a video selfie, we share the image with Yoti, and nothing else. Yoti’s technology estimates your age based on your facial features and shares that estimate with us. Meta and Yoti then delete the image. The technology cannot recognize your identity – just your age.
Social Vouching: This option allows you to ask mutual followers to confirm how old you are. The person vouching must be at least 18 years old, must not be vouching for anyone else at that time and will need to meet other safeguards we have in place. The three people you select to vouch for you will receive a request to confirm your age and will need to respond within three days.

You will still be able to upload your ID to verify your age with forms of identification like a driver’s license or ID card. We will use your ID to confirm your age and help keep our community safe. Your ID will be stored securely on our servers and is deleted within 30 days.

We worked with international youth, privacy and safety experts to inform our approach. You can learn more about these three options and how to set them up here.

Partnering With Yoti

We’re partnering with Yoti, a company that offers privacy-preserving ways to verify age. Yoti is verified by the Age Check Certification Scheme and is the leading age verification provider for several industries around the world including social media, gaming and age restricted e-commerce. Expert and governmental organizations in youth and privacy, including the German regulator KJM, have publicly endorsed Yoti for their approach and expertise in responsible artificial intelligence (AI).

Yoti notes that it trains its dataset on anonymous images of diverse people from around the world who have transparently allowed Yoti to use their data and who can ask Yoti to delete their data at any time. For people under the age of 13, Yoti collected data using specific data collection exercises where parents or guardians have given explicit consent.

Using AI to Understand People’s Ages

In addition to testing the new menu of options to verify people’s ages, we also use AI to understand if someone is a teen or an adult. AI helps us prevent teens from accessing Facebook Dating, adults from messaging teens and helps teens from receiving restricted ad content, for example. Our goal is to expand the use of this technology more widely across our technologies. To learn more about how our technology works, and the advancements we’re making in artificial intelligence, you can review our AI blog post.

Our Approach to Privacy

The information provided in each age verification option is used to confirm your age and won’t be visible on your profile, to friends or other people on Instagram. If you choose to upload a video selfie to verify your age, Meta and Yoti delete it once your age is confirmed. Your video is not used for anything else other than to verify your age. If you choose to upload an ID, after you send us a copy of your ID, it'll be encrypted and stored securely.

Understanding someone’s age online is a complex, industry-wide challenge. We want to work with others in our industry, and with governments, to set clear standards for age verification online. Many people, such as teens, don’t always have access to the forms of ID that make age verification clear and simple. As an industry, we have to explore novel ways to approach the dilemma of verifying someone’s age when they don’t have an ID.

We still believe an effective way of addressing this problem is for devices or App Stores to provide apps with people’s ages, allowing teens to be placed in age-appropriate experiences across all the apps they use. In the absence of industry standards or regulation on how to effectively verify age online, we’ve invested in a combination of technologies that are more equitable, provide more options to verify age and that protect the privacy of people using our technologies.

Instagram introduces new ways for users to verify their age

If Instagram suspects you are fibbing about your age, you'll currently see the following message:

“You must be at least 13 years old to have an Instagram account. We disabled your account because you are not old enough yet. If you believe we made a mistake, please verify your age by submitting a valid photo ID that clearly shows your face and date of birth.”

Now Meta has announced it's testing new options for people on Instagram to verify their age, starting with people in the US. The new options are uploading a video selfie, and social vouching. The old verification method to upload an ID is still an option for those that prefer it.

Users that are unable to verify their age will have their accounts deleted.

Trigger

The verification procedure starts when a user attempts to raise their age from under to above 18. This is relevant since Instagram provides users from 13 -17 years old with age-appropriate experiences like defaulting them into private accounts, preventing unwanted contact from adults they don’t know, and limiting the options advertisers have to reach them with ads.

Other reasons Instagram might ask you to verify your age are it receives a report from another Instagram user, or a content reviewers flags your accounts as appearing to be in use by someone underage.

Social vouching

The social vouching option allows you to ask mutual followers to confirm how old you are. You might expect this to be an option that can easily be abused, but Meta says it's built in additional safeguards. Three people must independently confirm the user is over 18, and they all must be at least 18 years old themselves and not be vouching for anyone else at that time.

Video selfie

Certainly the option that raises some concerns is the video selfie. You can choose to upload a video selfie to verify your age. If you choose this option, you’ll see instructions on your screen to guide you through the process. The age analysis, an estimate of your age based on your facial features, is done by Yoti, and both Meta and Yoti promise to delete the image once the analysis has completed.

You may have heard of Yoti due to its digital ID app. Yoti is a free consumer app that offers you a way of proving who you are online and in person. In the UK, Yoti is a government-approved digital ID provider, which allows UK citizens to prove their identities with an app instead of physical documents when applying for a job or renting a property.

Additional AI usage

In addition to testing the new menu of options to verify people’s ages, Meta uses Artificial Intelligence to estimate people’s ages. This can be very simple indicators, like birthday wishes, or comparing the age of linked accounts, such as your Facebook and Instagram accounts. But it can also look at interactions with other profiles and content. For example, people in the same age group tend to interact similarly with certain types of content. From those signals, the model learns to make calculations about whether someone is an adult or a teen.

How to find out the date of creation of a profile on Instagram: one's own and someone else's

It is possible to find out the date of registration of an Instagram account through the settings, where detailed information is indicated. On other people's business pages, there is also a section where data about nickname changes and the date of creation are shown.

By the way, if you have just created an account, I recommend that you add at least 100-200 followers and a few likes so that the account does not look empty. You can do this through the TapLike service.

Contents

Date of registration on Instagram

The day and year of account creation is mainly needed for limits that differ on new pages and registered more than a year ago.

There are several options for finding out the registration date:

through the page settings;
first posts posted or moved to Archive;
function: "Memories" in Stories.

If the profile owner has previously added any entries in the Stories, then after a year he will be asked to re-share the same post. An inscription will appear: “Remember your old publications” and the ability to post in the public domain. It is better to do a full page analysis through InstaHero. nine0003

But such a function, like viewing records in the Archive, is available only to those who transferred posts or turned on automatic storage. Otherwise, all added posts will be deleted immediately, as soon as 24 hours pass or the page owner chooses not to "Archive", but to delete the post.

Through profile information

The profile owner can view the date of registration on Instagram using the settings. A separate tab is available in your account, which contains information about changes in nicknames, email addresses or phone numbers. nine0003

How to see the creation date of your page:

Go to Instagram Settings - Security.
Data available - first item.
Account information - registration date.

It will indicate when the page was registered, as well as the exact time. In addition to creation data, there is a change in the level of confidentiality of the profile, password changes, previous email addresses.

The "Data Access" section is open only to the owner of the profile. If this is an open business account, then only the minimum will be open to subscribers, which does not include a phone number or personal email address. Shown only contact information related to the section: "For communication with customers. " nine0003

Look in the publication and Archive

The second way to check the date of registration on Instagram is to go to the archive. If the page owner has hidden any entries, they will be archived. This section stores videos, photos and Stories, regardless of the timing. For example, if the profile owner did not want to delete the post, but simply made it inaccessible, it is enough to proceed to archiving.

How to view posted posts:

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Go to Instagram - click on the side menu: "Archive".
Top: "Publications" - see when the first post was added.

If the owner of the page has not archived, it is enough to go to the first posted photo or clip. Below the post will appear the date when it was added. Finding out the date of page registration on Instagram is not always accurate, so this option is more suitable for presumptive information. nine0003

Memories on Instagram

The Memories section is also linked to Stories and Archives. Only the owner of the page can find out online the date of registration on Instagram through Stories. Only he has access to the "Archive" section and the ability to change the storage settings for media materials.

How to view:

Settings - Archive.
Highlight the subcategory at the top: Stories.
Below will appear: "Memories" for this day a year, two or three years ago. nine0016

If the user shared a post with friends, then the inscription will be automatically added: "Memories" and the date when it was first posted. This is the second way to find out the estimated date of registration on a social network.

But this option will not work if the page owner has not previously specified saving the content to the Archive. This means that all posted posts were deleted after 24 hours.

Find out someone else's registration date

The page owner will be able to find out the registration date of someone else's Instagram account if the person they are looking for has a business status and more than 1000 subscribers. In other cases, information about the page will not be available. nine0003

How to find out when an account was created:

Go to Instagram - select the page of the desired user.
Press the top three dots - Details.
View account creation date.

The owner of a public profile cannot hide such information, because it is necessary to check online stores or pages for the sale of any services.

Also, the creation date may be needed when working with bloggers or before buying a page or group. If the profile was created recently, then it has a list of restrictions and limits. nine0003

And if you want to know someone else's statistics before buying advertising, then we recommend that you analyze the blogger's subscribers through InstaHero

Why do you need the date of registration on Instagram

The social network has rules regarding the confidentiality of personal data. But contact information, company data is what subscribers need to know. For example, if the profile owner guarantees the accuracy of the published information and indicates that his page is the only original one, this can be verified by the date of creation. nine0003

Other reasons to know the day and time of registration:

buying goods in the Instagram store;
cooperation with a blogger;
acquisition of an entire community or public page;
the reliability of information and the ability to verify the authenticity of the profile.

The second way to confirm the status of "Verified" is to get a blue check mark on Instagram. But initially, until the confirmation request has been approved, the owner can refer to the date the profile was created. This option is suitable for media people. nine0003

Instagram requires age. Why is it necessary and what to do

Despite the fact that Instagram is published mainly by an adult audience, the content there is much more restrained than on any Twitter. The social network carefully ensures that users not only do not post frank, shocking or misleading photos or videos in the feed, but do not even leave offensive comments. Apparently, therefore, as such, there were never any age restrictions on Instagram. But now everything has changed dramatically. nine0003

Instagram began to require age

How to download photos from Instagram to your phone

Instagram has introduced a new rule that requires users to indicate their age without fail. This is a key condition for accessing the service, which cannot be bypassed. It is impossible - not in the meaning of “forbidden”, but in the meaning of “impossible”, because this will be monitored by a special neural network, which will instantly understand that they are trying to deceive it.

Instagram asks for date of birth

You will have to specify your age if you want to continue using Insta

The changes introduced by Instagram will be noticed only by those users who have not previously indicated their date of birth. For the rest, nothing will change, and they will be able to continue using the service as before without restrictions. However, those who missed this moment at the stage of registration or filling out a profile will be asked to fill in the gap.

The requirement to indicate the date of birth in the profile settings follows for security reasons, explained on Instagram. Therefore, whether the age specified by the user matches the real one will be monitored very strictly. Especially for this purpose, the service has trained a neural network that will reveal the true age. True, it is not clear how to do this if the user does not have his own photos in his profile. nine0003

How to make Instagram stories the right way. Application examples

Most likely, you will need to confirm your age with a photograph. yourself or your document. Personally, I'm leaning towards the first option. Still, the collection of documents requires more responsibility, which the service itself hardly needs. But asking the user to take a selfie is much easier. Moreover, some services already use such methods.

However, this is not so important. And the important thing is that Instagram will block the entrance for users who either did not indicate their age or indicated the wrong one. I don’t know if the neural network will detect lies if you downplay your years, but it will definitely identify and block those who exaggerate them. True, not forever, but until the moment of correction. nine0003

Instagram Age Restrictions

Instagram will filter content based on the user's age

Based on the user's age, Instagram will filter content that matches the user. Thus, publications with explicit or shocking content will be hidden from those who have not yet reached the age of majority. This limitation cannot be bypassed. So the service plans to deal with unwanted content by narrowing its audience based on age.

This will limit the display of not only publications, but also advertisements. That is, Instagram will know whether you can recommend alcoholic drinks or other products that have age restrictions or not. In the future, it is planned to limit some of the regular functions of the application for young users. nine0003

Instagram Lite: how is it different from the usual, why is it needed and how to download it

Instagram intends to prohibit older users from directing underage users unless their accounts are controlled by adults. In essence, this is what Apple wants to do with its iMessage service, shielding children from pornographic and other explicit content. Especially if their parents do not know what their child is watching.

It is likely that age limits vary from country to country. It's all about what age local laws recognize as the age of majority. For example, in the USA it is considered 21 years old, and in Russia - 18 years. So it’s worth waiting for regional differences in Instagram policy. By and large, there is nothing difficult in implementing changes depending on the country.