Why is it so easy to fake the age to use any social network?

The use of social networks has spread brutally in recent years. Having a profile in one of the fashionable social networks has become essential for many people and a great temptation for minors. There is everything, parents who supervise their children’s social media accounts, people who expose them to the world from a very young age and also adolescents who falsify their age in order to create an account among many other debates that can be opened related to the use of the networks by minors and the excessive exposure of some in many cases.

Social networks have become a great attraction for people of all ages. Now young people link through Instagram or Tik Tok and also follow the influencers of the moment as if they were idols. The Internet and social networks have opened a world of communication possibilities for our society, but we must not forget that they also harbor some dangers. Actions such as falsifying the age or creating false profiles on social networks is not a complicated task. Regarding the question of why it is so easy to falsify our age or any type of personal data in social networks, there is no correct answer, but there are some keys that can lead us to reflect on it.

fake the age to use any social network

Falsify data on social networks

Today it is possible to create a Facebook account without giving any contact details. There are not a few scandals that have formed around privacy or data leakage of all kinds on social networks. Despite everything, it is still possible to continue falsifying data such as age or hiding under a false profile to make all kinds of comments through social networks.

We are also living in a time when insults and threats on social networks are the daily bread. They have become like a disguise with which some users believe they have the right to everything, when surely, if they meet that person face to face they would not have the courage to judge them in the same way as through a social network. A very serious matter that is included as a crime in the Penal Code with prison sentences of up to five years depending on the conduct of the person in question. A situation to which all of us who have a profile in a social network expose ourselves, and to which minors who falsify their age are also exposed and who do not have the maturity or the tools to know how to assimilate and face situations of this type.

Facebook

Some social networks begin to take action

Although falsifying our age on social networks is quite simple, some social networks such as Instagram have already begun to take measures to protect minors . Instagram wants to ensure that those under 18 in Spain are more protected from content exposure and minimize contact with criminals, toxic users or trolls that take advantage of the innocence and lack of experience of the youngest. To try to protect them, Instagram will force its users to confirm the date of their birthday to discover their age and to be able to apply different measures to protect the privacy of both minors and adults.

A priori, what many of us may think is that violating this type of measure is quite simple, since minors can always falsify this information. However, on Instagram they are aware of this and are already working on technologies based on artificial intelligence that allow them to discover the real age of users through the interactions they make in the publications that congratulate birthdays. On the other hand, social networks such as Tik Tok allow you to activate parental control to control the use that your children make within the social network. Some barriers that Tik Tok puts to protect minors is the tightening of options to comment on videos created by minors under 16 years of age or restricting the option “recommend your account to others” to users between 13 and 15 years of age.

adolescentes móvil

End of anonymity in social networks?

Finally, and related to social networks and the falsification of data within them, in mid-October the Popular Party presented in the Senate a bill to force platforms and social networks to identify all users who are discharge. They propose to modify Law 34/2002 on services of the information society and electronic commerce. The proposal establishes that social networks have to have some information stored about the real person who is behind a profile in a social network through the DNI, or failing that, have the technological means to identify the person who has made the storage of data when registering.

In any of the cases, it is difficult to put doors to the Internet. Skipping these types of bills is as simple as using a VPN with an account in another country. However, these types of proposals would help reduce threats and insults on social networks and would make it more difficult to create anonymous accounts or access by minors to any social network. At the end of the day, putting up barriers so that it is not so easy to falsify the age in social networks or create false accounts will depend on the decisions that the owners of the same want to make, as well as other factors that may influence.