Instagram asking users' birth date to enforce child safety measures

San Francisco: In a bid to make the platform safer for its younger audience, the Facebook-owned Instagram is asking users to supply their date of birth.

The company said that it will allow them to create new safety features for young people and will help in ensuring that the company is providing the right experiences to the right age group.

"We have been clear that we want to do more to create safer, more private experiences for young people. To do that we need to know how old everybody is on Instagram, so, we have started asking people to share their birthday with us if they have not shared it previously," Pavni Diwanji, VP of Youth Products, said in a blogpost.

This information also allows the platform to personalise user experience, for example, they can apply recent changes they made to restrict advertiser targeting options for audiences under the age of 18, to more people.

"This work began a few years ago when we started asking people for their birthday. While we have birthdays for most people on Instagram, to get a more complete picture we are introducing two new changes. These changes only apply to people who have not already shared their birthday," the company said.

"First, we will start to ask you for your birthday when you open Instagram. We will show you a notification a handful of times and if you have not provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you will need to share it to continue using Instagram. This information is necessary for new features we are developing to protect young people," it added.

"Second, if you see warning screens placed on posts, we'll ask you for your birthday before you can see the post," according to the company.

The company is also developing new systems to recognise if the user has shared correct or incorrect birth date.