Currently, the minimum age required to create an Instagram account, as well as its Facebook owner, is 13 years old. In order to protect teenagers from unwanted contact with much older users, the social network has introduced new measures in its policy, now adults will only be able to send direct messages (Direct Messages (DM) in English) to people under 18 who are followers.
New underage users will be encouraged to create private profiles when they join Instagram and even if they decide to make them public, the social network will send notifications suggesting the benefits of the private account and inviting them to check the settings.
Instagram is also developing artificial intelligence and technology with machine learning to try to detect the creation of profiles with a false age, but there is still no great detail as to how this tool will work.
Even in cases where the adolescent follows the adult user, he/she will see warnings in the conversations that inform if the older person has shown suspicious behavior, such as frequent sending of message requests to users under 18 years of age. age. The social network will still have notifications to support the adolescent who is in such a situation and will make restriction suggestions.
The Instagram DMs tab has been given the function of silencing words recently and is expected to gain encryption soon. In addition to the ban on the exchange of private messages between non-follower adults and teenagers, the social network is working to make the connection between these two age groups more difficult.
Adults who exhibit “suspicious behavior” will be restricted from finding teenagers in the suggested accounts tab and discovering content from these users in the Reels or Explore tabs. However, it will automatically hide comments from these adults in public posts by teenagers.
What did you think of the new Instagram policy? Tell us your opinion in the comments!
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