Let’s face it: there are too many minors on social media, and living like that for a child is not exactly a good idea. Something needs to be done, and Instagram might have the right formula.
Instagram wants to stop the access for the app to children, as only teenagers and adults are allowed. As a result, it has announced new ways to verify the users’ age. Besides uploading your ID to the social network to get your age verified, there might be two more privacy layers that you need to pass.
Social vouching comes
Instagram is now introducing social vouching, a new feature that will ask your friends to confirm that you indeed have the age you’re claiming to have. There are some conditions here, as the friend the platform is asking for confirmation must be at least 18 years old.
But there’s more, as if you’re the one who needs to get his age checked, you’ll also need to have three friends to vouch for you. It may even take up to 3 days for those people to confirm your age or not.
Uploading a video of your face to confirm your age is the other new method that we’ll see on Instagram.
Meta made the announcement on Thursday, saying:
Starting today, we’re testing new options for people on Instagram to verify their age, starting with people based in the US. If someone attempts to edit their date of birth on Instagram from under the age of 18 to 18 or over, we’ll require them to verify their age using one of three options: upload their ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age.
Therefore, the new privacy layers are under the testing phase for now, which means that we’re hoping to find out more soon enough!