Instagram will prevent adults from sending messages to teens who don’t follow them. The social network company has announced measures to make “the youngest members of our community safer”. With the new measures, it will prevent adults from starting private conversations with teenagers (under 18) who do not follow them.
Instagram’s measures against abuse
With this, the company claims to protect teens from unwanted contact. Put into practice, it means, according to Instagram’s statement, that adults will receive a notification that texting that minor is not an option, as seen in the article’s main image.
In addition to this preventive measure for all adults, Instagram says it will implement another related measure such as indicating through security warnings to teenagers that the person with whom they already have a relationship through messages may be dangerous.
They will do this based on what they call “potentially suspicious behavior”, and to place this label they base it on, for example, sending many friend requests to minors. Upon receiving the alert, teens will be able to end the conversation, block, report, or restrict.
Beyond the age indicated to the platform in the registration, the social network claim that the functions to prevent harassment of minors use machine learning to predict the age of people. In that sense, Instagram cites end-to-end encryption as a brake on other security measures, but that they are taking into account to achieve the task.
Finally, Instagram will urge young people to make their accounts private. Right now, they already offer an option at registration that gives them a choice between public and private profile and, if they choose the former, they will later receive messages explaining the advantages of having a private account.
