How old do you have to be for 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.
Continuing to Make Instagram Safer for the Youngest Members of Our Community
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March 17, 2021
Protecting young people on Instagram is important to us.
Today, we’re sharing updates on new features and resources as part of our ongoing efforts keep our youngest community members safe. We’re also providing an update on our work to understand age in a way that helps keep people — especially young people — safe. We have dedicated teams focused on youth safety, and we work closely with experts to inform the features we develop.
Supporting parents and teens with new resources
We want parents to have the information to help their teens have a safe and positive experience on Instagram. In the US, we’ve collaborated with The Child Mind Institute and ConnectSafely to publish a new Parents Guide. It includes the latest safety tools and privacy settings, as well as a list of tips and conversation starters to help parents navigate discussions with their teens about their online presence. This updated Guide has launched with expert partners in other countries including Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and Singapore, and will continue to be rolled out in more countries soon.
This also complements our existing Parents’ Guides which provide support for parents in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, and which were developed in partnership with local safety experts.
“Instagram can provide young people the opportunity to strengthen connections, practice social skills and find supportive communities. It’s important that teens and parents are equipped with information on how to manage their time on the platform so that it's thoughtful, safe and intentional. The new Parents Guide we've worked on does a great job of distilling what parents should know about how to support their teens as they navigate social media.”
Dr. Dave Anderson, Clinical Psychologist, Child Mind Institute
Improving our work to understand people's real age
We require everyone to be at least 13 to use Instagram and have asked new users to provide their age when they sign up for an account for some time. While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth.
We want to do more to stop this from happening, but verifying people's age online is complex and something many in our industry are grappling with. To address this challenge, we’re developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features, like those described below.
Restricting DMs between teens and adults they don’t follow
To protect teens from unwanted contact from adults, we’re introducing a new feature that prevents adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don’t follow them. For example, when an adult tries to message a teen who doesn’t follow them, they receive a notification that DM’ing them isn’t an option. This feature relies on our work to predict peoples’ ages using machine learning technology, and the age people give us when they sign up. As we move to end-to-end encryption, we’re investing in features that protect privacy and keep people safe without accessing the content of DMs.
Lucy Thomas, Co-Founder / Co-CEO, PROJECT ROCKIT
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Prompting teens to be more cautious about interactions in DMs
In addition to preventing conversations between adults and teens who don't follow one another, we'll start using prompts — or safety notices — to encourage teens to be cautious in conversations with adults they’re already connected to.
Safety notices in DMs will notify young people when an adult who has been exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior is interacting with them in DMs. For example, if an adult is sending a large amount of friend or message requests to people under 18, we’ll use this tool to alert the recipients within their DMs and give them an option to end the conversation, or block, report, or restrict the adult. People will start seeing these in some countries this month, and we hope to have them available everywhere soon.
Larry Magid, CEO, ConnectSafely.org
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Making it more difficult for adults to find and follow teens
In the coming weeks, we'll start exploring ways to make it more difficult for adults who have been exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior to interact with teens.
This may include things like restricting these adults from seeing teen accounts in 'Suggested Users', preventing them from discovering teen content in Reels or Explore, and automatically hiding their comments on public posts by teens.
Encouraging teens to make their accounts private
Having a private account offers more protections for teens as they can better control who can see and interact with their content. We’ve recently added a new step when someone under 18 signs up for an Instagram account that gives them the option to choose between a public or private account. Our aim is to encourage young people to opt for a private account by equipping them with information on what the different settings mean.
We know young people, like aspiring creators or athletes, find value in public accounts. So teens can still opt for a public account if they choose to do so after learning more about the options. If the teen doesn’t choose ‘private’ when signing up, we send them a notification later on highlighting the benefits of a private account and reminding them to check their settings.
This is just a first step. We're assessing additional measures we can take to protect young people on Instagram, including additional privacy settings. We'll have more to share in the coming months.
Will Gardner, CEO, Childnet International
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We believe that everyone should have a safe and supportive experience on Instagram. These updates are a part of our ongoing efforts to protect young people, and our specialist teams will continue to invest in new interventions that further limit inappropriate interactions between adults and teens.
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What kind of Instagram filter that shows what age you look like
Instagram users got carried away with the How old do I look filter, which shows what age a person looks like. While some people received very flattering results, the mask identified others as looking older than their years. We tell you how to find this effect, how to use it and why you should not be too upset because of the verdict.
In late January and early February, more and more videos and photos using the How old do I look effect began to appear on Instagram.
As you might guess, the filter analyzed the appearance of a social network user using a camera on a smartphone and issued a verdict - and someone really liked it, because the mask rejuvenated them. nine0003
There were also less fortunate Instagram users. It's not too pleasant to find out that, according to the filter, you look 12 years older - as it was with the girl in the video below.
And one guy was even less fortunate: the effect stubbornly considered him either a middle-aged man or even a grandfather.
British singer Cheryl Cole (Tweedy) was also among those who were filtered by years. The star is now 36 years old, but the program considered her a 47-year-old woman, which, of course, she was not at all happy about. nine0003 Instagram — cherylofficial
Instagram mask How old do I look appeared in the profile of an Indonesian named Perdy Ferdiansia. The man's LinkedIn account states that he is a back-end developer for software company eBdesk. In his blog on this social network, Ferdiansia said that he launched the filter in mid-January - and since then more than 170 million people have used it, including stars - for example, model Kendall Jenner and football player Neymar.
How exactly the effect was made, the Indonesian did not specify, only noting that he "connected his passions for coding and creativity." nine0003
To use the filter, follow the link to the account of its creator (nickname - ferdaysss) and click on the element with a smiley in the mobile version, which is located directly below the posts. You will be shown a list of other masks made by Purdy, including How old do I look.
After you click on the video where the mask determines Ferdianja's age, Instagram will offer you to try the filter yourself. Then everything is simple: you need to hold the button in the front camera mode while the effect analyzes the appearance. The finished video can be immediately posted on your profile. nine0003
And if the program considers you much older than your years, you shouldn't get too upset. Firstly, the experience of Instagram users proves that the mask is often very wrong. For example, for many people, the effect even rejuvenated too much: the filter authoritatively reported that an adult on camera looks like a child.
This result was obtained by both women ...
... and men.
And even a beard with a mustache sometimes does not convince the filter that their owner has long outgrown puberty. nine0003
The experiment of an activist named Jacinth Bassett, who fights against ageism (prejudice based on a person's age), also shows that something is clearly wrong with the effect. The woman applied the filter five times in a row and, according to her, got the following results: 48 years old, 36 years old, 13 years old, 60 years old and 21 years old. The screenshots of Jacinth show that during the use of How old do I look, she was wearing the same clothes and makeup, and her facial expression was almost the same.
November 2019years, social media users were carried away by a much crazier filter that turns people into cats. The owners of the fluffy ones, of course, immediately showed how their pets react to such a transformation, and the amazed muzzles of the tailed ones are worthy of memes.
In the summer, the FaceApp effect became popular on the Web, which can age any person in a photo. With its help, people looked at the age-old Putin and Medvedev, learned how Russian stars would look like in a couple of decades. Not avoided wrinkles and gray hair and Western celebrities. nine0003
Instagram wants to know how old you are (but you can lie)
The new policy is part of Instagram's ongoing efforts to protect younger users—and not run into the Children's Internet Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Instagram is taking a small step to ban children under 13 from using the app. Starting today, Facebook property will ask new users to enter their date of birth when registering.
The new policy only applies to new users, and teens desperate to sign up can only lie about their birthday because Instagram will use an honor system and won't check new age users.
"Millions of teenagers on the internet often don't have any means to prove their age or personality and AI/machine learning abilities to pinpoint young users are still in their early stages," an Instagram spokesperson said.
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Still, the new policy is part of Instagram's ongoing efforts to protect younger users—and not run into the Children's Internet Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
"In the coming months, we will use the information Birthday you share with us to create a more customized set of procedures, such as education around account controls and recommended privacy settings for youth" on Facebook, owned by said service in today's post . nine0003
The law prohibits internet companies from collecting personal data from anyone under 13 without parental consent. As a result, most sites simply ban young users rather than deal with the verification headache. But Instagram didn't ask users for their age.
"Historically, we didn't require people to tell us their age because we wanted Instagram to be a place where everyone can express their identity completely independently," a spokesman said. What will change now. nine0003
There are some compromises with Instagram's new approach.
On the one hand, knowing someone's age can help Instagram automatically enforce the most robust privacy and security guarantees for its youngest users. But on the other hand, those same users give up their date of birth, an information service owned by Facebook, a company notorious for handling personal data by people. However, Instagram says the date of birth information will not be visible to other users on the platform and will only appear on your personal account page. nine0003
If you signed up for Instagram through your Facebook account, then you can expect your date of birth to be shared with the social network on Instagram. "Many existing Instagram users are connected to Facebook, so we already understand their age," a company spokesman added. "For the rest of the (existing) users, we're thinking about how best we can capture their age without creating an intrusive experience."
As part of today's announcement, Instagram is also preparing a new feature to prevent strangers from slipping into your direct messages.
