Inline with Instagram’s mission to create safer, more private experiences for young people, the platform has started asking people to share their birthday with them, if it wasn’t shared previously.
As shown above, the newly introduced prompts will ask users to enter their birthday. If you decide to ignore the prompt, Instagram will block you from the app until you add in the required information.
According to Instagram:
“This information also allows us to personalize your experience, for example, we can apply recent changes we made to restrict advertiser targeting options for audiences under the age of 18, to more people. It also helps us show you more relevant ads.”
Additionally, the platform will also begin requesting for people’s birth dates when posts hidden by warning screens appear.
Instagram is aware that people may attempt to bypass the prompts by entering the incorrect birthday, to which the platform is developing new systems that are aimed at addressing this. For starters, the company have started introducing artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts.