James Delahunty
4 Dec 2019 21:03
The service will ask new users for their date of birth when creating a new account, it has confirmed.
Instagram has no plans to retroactively seek the date of birth of its vast millions of existing users, feeling it may be intrusive to do so. On a blog post explaining the change, Instagram cited a desire to provide age-appropriate experiences for its users.
"Asking for this information will help prevent underage people from joining Instagram, help us keep young people safer and enable more age-appropriate experiences overall," the blog post explains.
"We will use the birthday information you share with us to create more tailored experiences, such as education around account controls and recommended privacy settings for young people."
Instagram will not be attempting to verify the date of birth provided by new users, however. Age verification is a topic that is increasingly at the forefront of public discussion about digital services and their effects on young users. Within the industry itself, there is a debate on how exactly age verification can be successfully implemented, though regulators would certainly like to see it implemented.
Currently, the minimum age requirement to use Instagram is 13 years. This is a widely broken rule with estimated millions of pre-teenage users populating all major social networks and services.