Cyberbullying, addiction… how Instagram will verify the age of its users to “protect” teenagers ?

Deux solutions seront donc proposées à l’utilisateur pour vérifier son âge (illustration). imageBROKER.com – imageBROKER/Infinity News Collec

Instagram has announced new measures to “protect” teens, such as age verification.

While Instagram is under the spotlight in the United States regarding its harmful influence on the mental health of adolescents (addiction, cyberbullying or eating disorders), the platform announced on September 17, 2024 “protective” measures.

Among them, limiting interactions with strangers, or allowing parents to limit the time their child spends on the application, indicates BFM Tech & Co.

Age verification with the identity card, on Instagra. © Instagram

The platform specified that, in certain cases, an age verification may be imposed, in particular if a user who has already created an account by providing an age lower than 18 tries to modify it to pass themselves off as an adult.

Two solutions

Two solutions will therefore be offered to the user to verify their age. The first consists of send your ID card directly to Instagram which will store it for 30 days before deleting it

The second solution is to record a video of your face that will be analyzed by artificial intelligence to estimate the age of the Internet user “with a reliability of more than 98%", Capucine Tuffier, head of public affairs at Meta France, told Franceinfo. On its website, Instagram assures that the video is deleted once age verification has been completed.

Not mandatory for new accounts

This age verification will not be mandatory if a new account is created. This means that children will have the possibility of escaping these restrictions by entering a false date of birth when creating a secondary account.

For the social network, such a measure would indeed involve verifying the age of all new registrants. A solution that the platform did not wish to integrate.