Instagram makes entering your date of birth an obligation. According to the network, that should provide you with a better personalized experience. It is expected that there will also be specific options for young people.
Instagram users who have not yet entered their date of birth will start receiving a series of pop-ups from today to do so. After some of those notifications, it becomes an obligation anyway. You will have to enter your birthday to see sensitive or potentially shocking posts.
Instagram already proposed stricter privacy options for teens earlier this year, and the obligation probably has something to do with that. For example, it has become more difficult for adults to contact young people on Instagram, but the company needs to know everyone’s age.
The social network would also have plans for users under the age of thirteen, who are now officially not allowed to sit on Instagram. And, of course, there’s the whole ad model, where Instagram benefits from knowing which box to put users in to serve them ads.
In order to catch liars, Instagram has also developed artificial intelligence, which, for example, scans birthday greetings for your age. And because parent company Facebook has been trying to be omniscient for years, a comparison with your data on Facebook’s social network could also come in the future.
