Due to regulations and pressure from civil society, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram impose several restrictions on teen accounts to protect them from cyberbullies and predators, as well as to ensure their overall well-being. However, many teenage users falsify their age to bypass these restrictions. In response, Meta is developing a new mechanism to identify teens who lie about their age on Instagram. This feature will utilise AI to implement a tool called the "adult classifier," which will detect users under the age of 18 and automatically apply Instagram's restrictive privacy settings to their accounts.
According to Allison Hartnett, Director of Product Management for Youth and Social Impact at Meta, the company is implementing a software tool designed to assess various indicators related to user behaviour, including the accounts followed and the content frequently engaged with by individual users. Once this tool infers that a user is under the age of 18, it will transition them to a teen account, irrespective of the age they may have claimed on their profile.
The initial announcement regarding the use of artificial intelligence to identify younger users who may have misrepresented their age coincided with the rollout of teen accounts in September. These accounts are equipped with enhanced privacy settings tailored for users younger than 16 years. For example, such accounts default to private settings, prohibiting communication with unknown individuals.
How one can appeal for a regular account
On the day of the announcement, Meta did not specify the accuracy of the age-detection tool employed by the adult classifier. The company indicated to Bloomberg that there are plans to offer recourse for users who feel they have been mistakenly classified by the software, although details regarding this appeals process are still being developed.
What if a user again manually adjusts his age?
Additionally, teens attempting to manually adjust the age indicated on their accounts will be required to verify their identity. This verification can occur via the submission of an official government-issued identification or through a video selfie, utilising technology developed in partnership with Yoti, which previously facilitated age verification for Facebook Dating. Yoti’s machine learning algorithm estimates user age based on facial characteristics, and after providing their estimate to Meta, both entities delete the video submission.
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