Have you updated your birthday on Instagram? If not, then soon you will be prompted by the photo-sharing app to share your birthday on the platform. The popular social media app has announced that the users are now required to tell Instagram their birth date in order to use its services. If yours is an older account (before 2019) then you need to do so as it has become mandatory to provide these details.
Instagram via blog post announced that over the next few weeks some of the users on the platform will be asked to provide their birthdate if you have not shared it previously. This move comes in order to make the app a safer and private place for the users.
“We’ve been clear that we want to do more to create safer, more private experiences for young people. To do that we need to know how old everybody is on Instagram, so we’ve started asking people to share their birthday with us if they haven’t shared it previously, the blog post said.
According to Instagram, the information will enable it to create new safety features for young people and help ensure we provide the right experiences to the right age group. The app made some changes in March to prevent adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don’t follow them, and last month only it started to default new accounts belonging to people under the age of 16 into a private setting.
The app owned by Facebook also states that this info will also allow providing a personalised experience to Instagram users. For instance, they will be able to apply a recent change that was done to restrict advertiser targeting options for audiences under the age of 18, to more people. It also helps us show you more relevant ads.
Instagram brought the change to share birthdays in 2019 and now to get a more complete picture it has introduced two major changes that will apply to people who haven’t already shared their birthday. First of all, they will be prodded to share their birthday with the service. “We’ll show you a notification a handful of times and if you haven’t provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you’ll need to share it to continue using Instagram. This information is necessary for new features we’re developing to protect young people”, the company stated.
Secondly, when you see warning screens placed on posts the users will be asked for their birthday before they are able to see the post. These screens are similar to what is shown on posts that may be sensitive or graphic. “but we don’t currently ask for your birthday when viewing these posts. Now, we’ll start asking for your birthday on some of these screens if you haven’t shared it with us previously.”
Instagram is also developing new systems to identify people who may give wrong information. It uses artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts. So if someone provides a wrong birthdate the social media app will show them a menu of options to verify their age. As of now, the feature is in the early stages of its development.
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