Instagram AI age detection aims to catch teens pretending to be adults

You might be able to fool your followers, but Instagram's new AI could know your true age, especially if you are a teen pretending to be an adult

Teen Accounts first launched last September, a feature designed to automatically enroll younger users into a more protected version of Meta's apps

I talk to parents all the time about their concerns about their teens being online, and I consistently hear three things

One, concerns about who can contact them. Two, what content they see. And three, how much time that they spend online

That means anyone under 16 gets defaulted to a private account, can't go live on Instagram without parental permission, and has unwanted images hidden in their DMs

The feature applies across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, even sending reminders to teens if they spend more than 60 minutes on the platforms

But it doesn't take much to bypass those restrictions. All it takes is entering an older birth year in your account settings

But now Meta says it's using AI to outsmart that workaround by scanning for users who claim to be adults but might act like teens online

The technology looks at who users interact with, what they watch, and even birthday posts to estimate a more accurate age

A human review team can then step in to verify those data points and reassign accounts to the teen experience if needed While social media doesn affect all teens the same way a 2022 Pew Research study found that 62 of U teenagers aged 13 to 17 use Instagram alone And a 2024 study from

the American Psychological Association found that teens spend an average of nearly five hours a day

on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Of those with the highest usage, 41% rated their

overall mental health as poor. That level of usage raises red flags among health experts and parents

Many social media apps like Instagram have features like infinite scrolling, algorithm-driven content

and unpredictable notifications, keeping users engaged for longer. Another update to Meta

parents will now receive notifications from Instagram, prompting conversations about the importance of entering the correct age online. And since launching the feature back in September

Meta says it's identified and moved more than 54 million users into teen accounts

In a blog post, the company wrote, We'll continue our efforts to help ensure teens are placed in age-appropriate online experiences like teen accounts

but the most effective way to understand age is obtaining parental approval and verifying age on the App Store

With Stray Arrow News, I'm Kennedy Felton. Download our app or visit san.com for more

Thank you