Instagram begins using AI to find under-18 accounts

With a little help from AI, Instagram is now making sure Britain’s teenagers are abiding by the rules.

From Monday, the Meta-owned app is rolling out AI technology in the UK that identifies teen users who have fibbed about their age. 

The AI can identify if a user in the UK has incorrectly listed their age as 18 or over – by detecting at youthful facial features in their photos, for example. 

If it finds someone who looks underage, the AI will automatically enroll them into a ‘Teen Account’, Instagram’s age-appropriate version of the app. 

And although many teens will see the clampdown as like something their uncool teachers would do, it’s really for their own good.

Instagram’s technology is part of a wider move to make the app a safer place, where children are better-protected from paedophiles, scammers and more. 

‘Understanding the age of people online is an industry-wide challenge,’ Instagram staff said in a statement. 

‘We’ll continue our efforts to help ensure teens are placed in age-appropriate online experiences.’ 

Instagram requires everyone to be at least 13 years old if they want to create an account – which is why it asks for a birth date on sign-up. 

However, users who are aged between 13 and 17 find themselves on a special version of the app called ‘Teen Accounts’. 

On Instagram, Teen Accounts are automatically set to private, reducing the risk of approaches from online predators, in a bid to improve child safety. 

Teens will only receive messages from people they already follow, reducing the risk of unwanted or inappropriate interactions.  

What’s more, with Teen Accounts, parents have the ability to monitor who their child is messaging, set time limits for app usage, and block access during certain hours.

Instagram has already acknowledged that ‘young people can lie about their date of birth’, and as such some 13-17-year-olds have told the app they’re adults. 

As a result, teen app users have been able to bypass Teen Accounts – but that’s all changing. 

Instagram’s behind-the-scenes AI tool ‘proactively’ scours the app to find accounts it suspects belong to 13-17-year-olds, before setting them to Teen Accounts. 

Users will be told that the change has been made in a drop-down notification headed ‘We’ve updated your safety settings’. 

They then have the opportunity to review the decision and appeal against it – although if they really are under 18 there’s not much point. 

Users can appeal in the app either by sending through a selfie, which will be verified by third party facial recognition tech Yoti, or by sending through a copy of their ID. 

Instagram has already been using AI to find accounts belonging to under-18s in the US – and it appears to have been working efficiently enough to warrant a wider rollout. From Monday (September 22), the capability is coming to the UK, as well as Canada and Australia.

Also from Monday, Instagram will begin notifying UK parents with ‘information about how they can have conversations with their teens on the importance of providing the correct age online’. 

One of the many elements of Teen Accounts is the ability given to a parent or guardian to keep tabs on the child. 

Parental supervision tools give the adult more insights into their teen’s online activity – such the types of accounts they are engaging with, the types of content they are seeing and time spent on the app. 

Teens under 16 need a parent or guardian’s permission to change any of these settings if they want them to be less strict. 

However, Instagram stresses that all teens, regardless of whether or not they have a parent account linked, are placed into a Teen Account. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta, which has owned Instagram since 2012, has faced repeated calls to make its platforms safer for children – and in the couple of years it has made positive changes. 

Last year, it banned teens under the age of 18 from getting messages from strangers across Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

It also automatically started hiding content related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders from users who are under-18. 

However, some experts think 13 is still too young to be on Instagram, or even be using a smartphone at all. 

Vivek Murthy, physician and former US surgeon general, said social media at that age poses a risk to young people’s ‘self-worth and their relationships’. 

He said in 2023: ‘I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early.

‘The skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children.’