New policies restricting communications between teens and adults who do not already follow each other were announced Tuesday by Instagram.
According to the photo-sharing social network, a machine learning technology will be used to better identify the age of users and show safety prompts to kids to protect them from being targeted for harassment or grooming.
In order to protect teens from unwanted contact from adults, a new feature is introduced that prevents adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don’t follow them, a statement read.
The app will alert teens when an adult flagged for "potentially suspicious behavior" is contacting them. An example of such behavior is sending a large amount of friend or message requests to those under 18.
More features in the coming weeks are planned to be introduced by the Facebook-run app to make it more difficult for adults to interact with teens.
