Instagram will start asking its new users for entering their birthdays

Instagram has a new policy as it will now require from its all-new users to enter their birthdays to make an account on the social media platform. This new requirement from Instagram started yesterday and is now seemingly headed towards creating the experience which will be age-appropriate. The age of the user will offer up different privacy settings recommendations or might generate in-app information about being safe online.

The birthdays will still be offered to keep hidden from other Instagram users and the existing users might not have to add their birthdays. In order for new users to joining the social media platform, they must at least be 13 years old.

New users were not made necessary for adding their birthdays up until this recent announcement except for the cases where one single user had to merge their Facebook account with the Instagram account. Also, the minor residing in the European Union must also add in their birthdays which will allow for Facebook to comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Other new features:-

In addition to adding the birthdays, the company is also giving its users to block the messages from all the people that they are not following along with giving the power to the creator and business accounts to restrict their posts from being viewed by minors.

Instagram assured media sources that they won’t be verifying the submitted birthdays from the new users but they do hope that people will be honest with the submission of their real birthday.

I the past, the employees at Instagram have already been able to identify the age group of the users based upon the posts that read “Happy Birthday”.

There is also learning machine software that is fully trained for predicting the age as well as the gender of a user. The software works by looking at various posts from people as well as the hashtags they normally use for their data.

Reasons for this sudden new requirement:-

This new requirement has popped up because Instagram has been under scrutiny form the legislators for their influence over the attention of minors. In particular, teenagers have made a complaint about bullying so this age verification might help make the app present a more positive experience for all users.

One other reason for this might be so that the minors can be prevented from watching the ads about alcohol or other inappropriate ads that might influence them negatively.