Instagram is a very popular social network among young people. With permission from TikTok, it is the one that has experienced the most growth in recent years. There are thousands of content creators who share stories, reels and photos. In many cases, they collaborate with brands generating advertising content that, sometimes, is not labeled as such. In turn, the youngest are aware of the likes and views of the content published by their environment. There is a clear tendency for many of them to be hooked, spending many hours of their day to day glued to the mobile screen. Instagram blocks accounts of users who do not meet the minimum age, but it is not always easy to detect them. Do you know what is the minimum age to have an Instagram account?
For years, the social network has asked users to indicate their date of birth in the account creation process. In the summer of 2021, it decided to massively request the age of its registered users so that it is not used by minors who do not meet the minimum age requirement.
Minimum age set at 13 years
It may be a fact that many do not know or that they think that minors cannot have an account. The truth is that Instagram has a minimum age of 13. That is, there are legal minors in this social network.
According to Instagram on its official website, it is important for them to protect young people . About a year ago we launched new resources to help parents and teens. “ While most people state their true age, we know that young people sometimes lie about their date of birth. We want to prevent this from happening, but verifying the age of people online is complex and is a challenge for many actors in the sector” , they state.
In order to protect teens from unwanted contacts with adults, Instagram incorporates a feature that prevents adults from sending direct messages to those under 18 who do not follow them.
Another of the measures adopted to prevent children under 13 years of age from accessing the social network is the request that the birthday date be added. A piece of information that the platform assures is also useful for moderating the ads that are shown in this age group. Through AI they can determine if the user is lying about their age or not.
Instagram request to communicate the birthday date
Facebook prepares an Instagram Kids
For some time now, the idea has been around that Facebook is working on a special version of Instagram for children under 13 years of age. In an internal company statement, its vice president of product Vishal Shah indicated that it is a priority plan. “We have identified youth activity as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list.”
In this sense, they seek to focus on two fundamental aspects: to create a safer and more private environment for minors. Even so, the problem continues to persist and there are still minors who have not verified their age on the social network. This version of Instagram Kids for children under 13 may be available in the not too distant future, but for now, Instagram announced on September 27, 2021 that it was temporarily stopping the development of Instagram Kids to implement the creation of new tools. parental supervision.