Earlier this month, Neowin reported that Meta was rolling out teen accounts for underage Facebook and Messenger users after coming to Instagram last year. To ensure it enrolls as many teens as possible into these safer accounts, Meta has shared that it’s reaching out to parents directly and utilizing AI to push suspected underage users onto a teen account.
Starting today, Meta has begun notifying parents directly on Instagram to help them learn how to have conversations with their kids about using their correct age online. To help with this, Meta has worked with pediatric psychologist Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart compiled a list of tips for parents to help facilitate these conversations and how to check what age their children have used on their Instagram. Once kids have updated their settings, it will help Meta move them to a teen account for additional protections.
Another benefit of reaching out directly to parents is that it gives them the tools to better monitor their child"s online activities. With new updates coming out all the time, it can be difficult for parents to keep tabs on their kids, but by showing them how to check their age settings, and how to talk to their kids about this stuff, it could lead to a healthier parent-child relationship when it comes to online safety.
While this is an important step, there will be parents that don’t act on the notification, or just don’t have an account to receive the notification in the first place. To cover these gaps, Meta is going to be using AI, at least in the US, to identify accounts owned by teens (even if their reported age is older) and convert them into teen accounts.
Commenting on this, Meta wrote:
“We’ve been using artificial intelligence to determine age for some time, but leveraging it in this way is a big change. We’re taking steps to ensure our technology is accurate and that we are correctly placing teens we identify into protective, age-appropriate settings, but in case we make a mistake, we’re giving people the option to change their settings.”
The teen accounts that Meta is rolling out have several protections in place for younger users. For example, teens have private Instagram accounts and they must accept your follow request before any of their content can be seen. Further, messaging is restricted to those who are connected with the teen or who the teens follow, protecting them from unwanted messages. There are several other features beneficial for teens including time limit reminders and sleep mode.
Source: Meta