According to a new report from Bloomberg, Meta wants to use AI to predict the age of Instagram users and automatically move those under 18 into teen accounts if the company believes they are lying about their age.
Meta launched its teen accounts in September in response to public outrage over the impact of social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook on teen mental health. Teen accounts, aimed at children and teens between the ages of 13 and 17, have built-in restrictions on who they can contact and what content they can view. These are automatically set to hide potentially offensive comments and message requests.
Safe accounts for teens only work if users under 18 use them voluntarily or are honest about their age. That’s why Meta has developed a way to enforce appropriate account usage. Meta’s proprietary software tool, called “Adult Classifier,” is expected to be used next year and aims to separate users into two groups: under 18 and over 18. According to Allison Hartnett, Meta’s head of product management for youth and social influence, the tool will scan users’ profiles, the content they interact with, and their list of followers to identify their age. Even a trivial “happy birthday” message could be used to determine a user’s true age.
Because the teen accounts are new and currently voluntary, Instagram has a large user base of teens who use regular adult accounts. Meta plans to immediately transition youth who voluntarily provided their age information to new teen accounts and to roll out the “adult classifier” early next year.
The move is Meta’s latest attempt to address some of the public outrage over social media’s impact on teens. A 2021 report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Meta’s report suggested the company knew Instagram was harmful to the mental health of teens, especially teen girls. “We are exacerbating body image issues in one in three teenage girls,” a slide from Meta’s own 2019 report read.
