Instagram uses AI to detect underage users and move them to teen accounts

Meta is reportedly planning to use AI to estimate Instagram users’ ages and automatically switch anyone suspected of being under 18 to a teen account if they are thought to be misrepresenting their age. It comes as the company faces increased scrutiny over the impact of social media platforms on the mental health of teenagers.

According to Bloomberg, anyone caught lying about their age will be automatically switched on to more restrictive privacy settings.

Meta is said to be using a proprietary tool called an “adult classifier” to categorize users as either over or under 18, based on data from their accounts, says Allison Hartnett, Meta’s director of product management for youth and social impact.

The software is reported to analyze profile details, follower lists, and content interactions, even scanning subtle indicators like “happy birthday” posts from friends, to estimate a user’s age.

In a previous blog post on Meta’s site, the company explained that it needed a way to manage its growing user base. It said: “With billions of people around the world using our services, we need a scalable way to understand what it looks like when the age someone provides us doesn’t match their actual age.”

Meta states that it trains its AI model using profile signals like account creation date and interaction patterns to estimate whether a user is an adult or a teen. To assess its accuracy, it then develops an evaluation dataset by having teams review anonymized data points—such as birthday posts—to label users as either teens or adults.

The model’s performance is tested country by country for accuracy across various user groups. It retrains and checks the classifier against the labeled dataset to ensure it reflects the latest interactions and remains accurate and representative across user demographics.

Hartnett reports that users suspected by the software to be under 18 will be automatically assigned to teen accounts, regardless of the age they claim on their profiles. This is supposedly the first time she has shared these details about the process.

In September, ReadWrite reported on Meta’s new Instagram teen accounts, with enhanced privacy settings for under-16s. Users with the accounts are limited in who can contact them and what content they can see. Teenagers need their parents to approve any changes to these default settings. Early this year, the social media platform’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was forced to stand and face the families whose kids were harmed by online abuse.

Featured image: Ideogram

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