One of the largest social media platforms is stepping up its push for privacy concerns with young users.
What Happened: Instagram, a Facebook Inc FB-owned company, announced it will require all users to share their birthday.
“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,” Facebook said.
A notification window will pop up for users who haven't provided their birthdays. This can be dismissed several times but eventually, users will have to require their birthday to continue to use the platform.
Facebook said providing your age will help “personalize your experience.”
Earlier this year, Instagram put in several teen privacy protections including making it harder to contact teens through the app and making accounts default to private for users set under the age of 16.
Instagram will also ask users to provide their birthdays to view sensitive or graphic content.
Artificial intelligence will be used by Instagram to detect when users are lying about their age to bypass the age requirements.
Related Link: Instagram No Longer Lets You Visit External Links By Swiping Up On Stories
Why It’s Important: Facebook joins a list of other companies with a push for privacy controls for its young users that includes TikTok and Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL.
Aside from a push for teen privacy and possibly pressure for new legislation on the front, Facebook could be making the changes for two reasons that could help its financials.
- Instagram plans on launching a version of its service aimed at users under the age of 13. By collecting birthdays now, Instagram could be ahead on knowing how many users it has under this age and how big the platform’s launch could be.
- By collecting birthdays, Instagram will see better data on its users' ages, which could allow it to better advertise to them. The company said it will continue to allow advertisements that target users based on age, gender and location.
FB Price Action: Facebook shares are down 1% to $378.75. Shares have traded between $244.13 and $381.49 over the last 52 weeks.
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