Instagram will now ask for your birthday to let you use the app — will use AI to verify it

• If you haven’t provided your birthday on Instagram yet, you will now have to.
• This is compulsory to continue using the app.
• Instagram will also ask for your birthday if you’re trying to view sensitive posts.

Instagram will now start asking for your birthday when you open the app. This applies only to users who haven’t entered their birthdays on Instagram. It’s the latest attempt by Instagram to make the platform safe for younger users. Earlier this year in March, it prevented adults from sending messages to users under 18 who don’t follow them. Instagram also started making accounts private by default for users under the age of 16.

Now when you open the Instagram app you will be asked to enter your birthday. This will appear only for those users who haven’t entered their birthday on Instagram. You can also manually update your birthday information on Instagram from the ‘edit profile’ section on the app. Instagram’s reason behind getting every user’s birthday is for new features the company is developing for young users. This would mean that features for certain age groups would be enabled by default.

While this does sound helpful, the problem lies in whether users give their actual birthdays or not. Instagram is aware of this and it’s using artificial intelligence to “estimate how old people are based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts”. As for users who say they are above a certain age but Instagram finds they are not then these users will be asked to verify their age through a menu of options.

Instagram will also ask for your birthday if you’re trying to view sensitive posts. This is also only for users who haven’t entered their birthday on Instagram. Last month, Instagram gave users more control over sensitive content on the platform. Users can choose to either see more or less sensitive content on Instagram. By default Instagram limits the number of sensitive posts it shows but this feature lets users limit even more such content.

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