9 years after its launch, Instagram is finally stepping up to protect underage kids from the problems with social media. It will now ask new users to input their date of birth and ban users under 13 from joining. However, it won’t be asking existing users their age, so Instagram will turn a blind eye to any underage kids already among its 1 billion members. That’s still a big deal.
Instagram will later start using age info to offer education about settings and new privacy controls for younger users. It’s also adding the option to only allow people you follow to message you, add you to a group, or reply to your Story.
The photo and video platform will still keep your birthday and date private, and sync it with your Facebook profile if you link your accounts together.
Instagram had fallen far behind in protecting underage users. It’s relied on ignorance about users’ ages to avoid a $40,000 fine per violation of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act that bans services from collecting personal info from children under 13. “Asking for this information will help prevent underage people from joining Instagram, help us keep young people safer and enable more age-appropriate experiences overall” Instagram notes.
Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok already require users to enter their birth date as soon as they start the signup process. TikTok built a whole separate section of its app where kids can watch videos but not post or comment after it was fined $5.7 million by the FTC for violating COPPA.
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