Instagram will now require that new members provide their date of birth when signing up for an account to enable it to plan for more “age-appropriate experiences”.
The photo-sharing network already requires people to be at least 13 years old to create an account.
The new move will assist the company to avoid targeting ads for age-restricted products at children.
However, Instagram says advertising was not behind the change.
The company via a blog post said, “Asking for this information will help prevent underage people from joining Instagram, help us keep young people safer and enable more age-appropriate experiences overall.
“We will use the birthday information you share with us to create more tailored experiences, such as education around account controls and recommended privacy settings for young people.”
The information will help Instagram stop adult-focused advertisements for gambling, alcohol and birth control from being displayed to children.
But the company said that in the coming weeks it would encourage young members to switch on more privacy settings.
Instagram ‘s head of product said, “Understanding how old people are is quite important to the work we’re doing, not only to create age-appropriate experiences but to live up to our longstanding rule to not allow access to young people.”
According to Reuters, the update will not affect existing members because Instagram is not sure whether it would be too intrusive to ask.
The company has also said that it will not verify the date of birth information it is given. This did not go down well with the child-protection charity NSPCC.
NSPCC said, “Asking users to provide an unverifiable date of birth will do nothing in practice to protect children from harmful or age-inappropriate content.
“Forthcoming regulation will force platforms to go further and will require them to take steps to proactively apply additional protections to children’s accounts by default.
“But first and foremost the emphasis has to be on ensuring that platforms are safe in the first place for children to use.”
Facebook said: “We understand not everyone will share their actual age. How best to collect and verify the age of people who use online services is something that the whole industry is exploring and we are committed to continuing to work with industry and governments to find the best solutions.”
Instagram also has said it will not display the date of birth of users on their Instagram profile.
