What is more important to you: privacy or safety? This is a question that users must continuously ask themselves as technology continues to ask for more personal information from its audience. New users will soon be acquired to provide their age when signing up for Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook (NASDAQ: FB).
This latest update is designed to protect younger users and block children under the age of 13 from signing up. With this change, Instagram will be able to recommend different privacy settings depending on the person's date of birth. The new feature will also help to prevent the social media giant from showing alcohol and smoking-related ads to an under-aged audience.
"While we expect ads targeted by age to be more accurate on Instagram following this update, this isn't the reason we made these changes. Our focus is on developing new, age-appropriate experiences for young people using this information," Instagram stated in an email.
However, existing users will not be asked to reveal their age. This means that users under the age of 13 will continue to be able to use the app if they already have an account. Instagram also said it will soon give users more control to regulate who can send them direct messages. With this, the company hopes to prevent strangers from contacting their under-aged users.
In a recent blog post, Instagram wrote, "Historically, we didn't require people to tell us their age because we wanted Instagram to be a place where everyone can express themselves fully - irrespective of their identity. In the spirit of that decision, we won't show people's birthday information to others in the community."
The announcement has gotten many different responses from people. Many people have said that new users will simply just lie about their age to sign up. People noticed that the company doesn't verify users' age with sign up so new users can access the app under a fault age. Other users are concerned about giving Instagram more personal information.
With these recent changes, lawmakers have also started to reinforce the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa). The act prevents tech companies from gathering data on anyone under the age of 13. Although, some groups have claimed that Facebook has constantly violated Coppa by profiting from the data collection of those underage.
As time goes on, social media sites continue to change. Recently, Instagram also revealed that it is working on other features like hiding the number of "likes" on posts. The popular social media app will continue to shift, hopefully, for the betterment of its users.