Meta’s New AI Tool Targets Teens Hiding Behind Adult Profiles on Instagram

Meta launched the Instagram Teen Account last year in order to give peace of mind to parents. The Instagram Teen Account was introduced to protect teens from online risks and to comply with the global regulations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Now the tech giant is magnifying its rules and regulations for Teen Accounts and giving parents many more opportunities to have the right protections in place.

The company is taking additional steps to ensure that maximum teens are protected under these rules and regulations. This new rule will come under the ‘Parents’ Call to Action’ feature which will send notifications to parents on Instagram. This notification will allow parents to contact their kids and how they can have a conversation with their kids about providing the correct age on the platform.

As per Meta, “Parents are busy and don’t always have the time to review these settings. That’s why we’re continuing to take additional steps to ensure as many teens as possible are in Teen Account settings. Today, we’re beginning to test AI technology in the US that is designed to proactively find accounts we suspect belong to teens, even if the account lists an adult birthday, and place them in Teen Account settings.”

Meta worked with experts like pediatric psychologist Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart who gave some valuable tips to parents on about how to initiate these conversations and confirm that they are entering the right age on Instagram. As per Meta, the company has enrolled more than 54 million teens in Teen Accounts globally and 97% of the teens opted to stay under these protective settings of the platform.

The company is using artificial intelligence in order to determine age ranges and taking several steps to ensure that company’s technology is accurate and can identify kids and place them under protective, age-appropriate settings. Additionally, the tech giant is also giving an option of making changes if their AI makes mistake in identifying the kids under protective age accuracy rule.