Instagram will estimate your age with video selfies!

Today Meta announced that the company is starting to test new ways to verify the age of Instagram users in the US. There’s a specific scenario in which these three new options will be tested, and it involves people celebrating their 18th birthday.

“If someone attempts to edit their date of birth on Instagram from under the age of 18 to 18 or over, we’ll require them to verify their age using one of three options: upload their ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age,” reads part of the official announcement. Instagram requires people to punch in their age when they first sign up, and the minimum age for a person to be able to create an account is 13 (in some countries it’s even higher). The idea is to be able to tailor the content for the various age groups - protecting teens (13-17) from harmful content. Uploading your ID might not be the perfect way to do this, and that’s why Instagram is testing two additional options - the aforementioned selfie video and something called “social vouching.” The selfie video feature will rely on AI algorithms to guess the age of the person signing up or logging in (Meta is partnering with Yoti - a company specializing in age-verification technology to do this).