The minimum legal age to register on the photo and video sharing platform is 13 years old. “While a lot of people are honest about their age, we know young people can lie about their date of birth,” the company says in a blog post. “We want to do more to prevent this.”

Instagram, which is part of the family of applications owned by Facebook, did not give details on the tool it is developing to detect the real age of Internet users, merely indicating that it would be based on “artificial intelligence and machine learning”.

The service also announced that it would ban adults from sending messages to minors who do not follow them in order to avoid unsolicited exchanges. In addition, minors will receive notifications about adults who have demonstrated “potentially suspicious behavior”, which aims to limit interactions.

“For example, if an adult sends a large number of requests for messages or subscriptions to people under the age of 18, we will use this tool to alert recipients in their inbox and give them the option to end the conversation or else to block, report or restrict adults, ”says Instagram.

The platform specified that this last feature would be available in “certain countries” from March, without specifying which ones, and hopes to deploy it soon all over the world.