Instagram yesterday announced a new policy that will limit communication between teens and adults who have not yet followed each other on the social media platform.
The photo-sharing social network will use machine learning technology to more efficiently identify the age of its users and show safety instructions to children aimed at protecting them from being targeted by adult harassment.
"To protect teens from unwanted adult contacts, we have introduced a new feature to prevent adults from sending messages to users under 18 who do not follow them," Instagram said in a statement as reported by Bernama.
The app will alert teens when adult users marked as ‘potentially suspicious behavior’ contact them.
An example of such behavior is sending a large number of friend requests or messages to those under the age of 18.
The Facebook -run app plans to introduce more optional features in the near future to make it harder for adult users to interact with teens, including hiding teen accounts in the ‘suggested users’ option.
