Instagram to Block Adults From Contacting Young Users-Boosts Child Protection Tools

This is the world of technology, with multiple benefits it has some drawback as well. Being parents, we keep on controlling the screen time of our kids for good reasons including strain to the eyes etc but one of the fears that is bigger than all the other ones is saving them from the world of social media. Due to Covid-19, when kids are sitting in front of their computers all the time to take online classes, it has become extremely difficult to monitor them. Realizing the concerns form parents, Instagram, one of the widely used platforms among youngsters, has come up with an amazing feature that blocks adults from contacting young users, under the Child Protection Tools.

Instagram boosts child protection tools, including age prediction

This technology will prevent underage users from making an account and adults from contacting young people who they do not know. This action is taken after inappropriate contact was found between adults and children. Though many young users use fake age to set up an account on the platform, Instagram has decided to use artificial intelligence to learn about users’ age at the time of signup. This will help the company to find underage users.

While emphasising this feature, Instagram wrote in a blog post:

“While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth. We want to do more to stop this from happening, but verifying people’s age online is complex and something many in our industry are grappling with. To address this challenge, we’re developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features.”

The company further told that it is also working on a technology that will prevent adults from contacting users under 18 years.

“This feature relies on our work to predict peoples’ ages using machine learning technology, and the age people give us when they sign up”

Instagram warned teenagers to suspect the behaviours of adults especially those who are sending a large number of private messages.

Also Read: Facebook launches Instagram lite for Average Internet Connection & Budget Phones