Instagram will no longer allow adults to send messages to teenagers who don’t follow them

Instagram is introducing new policies that limit interactions between teenagers and adults to make its platform safer for young users. The app has banned adults from sending direct messages to teenagers who don’t follow them and is introducing “safety notices” that will be shown to teenagers when they teach adults who are “exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior”.

Security notices will give teen users the option to report or block adults who are sending messages to them. The prompts will remind young users not to feel pressured to respond to messages and to “be careful when sharing photos, videos or information with someone you don’t know”.

Warnings will appear when Instagram moderation systems identify suspicious behavior by adult users. The company is not sharing details about how these systems operate, but says that suspicious behavior may include sending “a large number of requests from friends or messages to minors under the age of 18”. Instagram, owned by Facebook, says that this feature will be available in some countries this month (did not specify which one) and will be available globally “soon”.

Image: Instagram

Instagram also says it is developing a new “artificial intelligence and machine learning technology” to try to detect someone’s age when signing up for an account. Officially, the app requires users to be 13 or older, but it is easy to lie about age. The company said it wants to do “more to prevent this from happening”, but did not provide details on how the new machine learning systems can help with this problem.

New teen users who sign up for Instagram will also be encouraged to make their profile private. If they choose to create a public account anyway, Instagram will send them a notification later “highlighting the benefits of a private account and reminding them to check their settings”.

Image: Instagram