Instagram has announced that it has begun testing a new way to verify the ages of users in the United States only, according to a report by Business Insider.
The trial focuses on users trying to change their age on the app to 18 and over.
These users have 3 ways to verify their age: upload a photo of their ID, ask 3 mutual friends to verify their age, or record a "selfie" video.
If the user chooses the "selfie" video method, Instagram passes the videos to Yoti in London for identity verification.
Instagram said it would scan a user's facial features in videos to confirm their age.
Both Instagram and YouTube will delete the data once the user's age is verified, according to the report.
Instagram wrote - citing a white paper from Ute - that the London startup's algorithm only verifies the user's age and not his identity.
He said the process would allow him to provide age-appropriate content to his users.
Knowing someone's age online is a complex challenge
"Knowing someone's age online is a complex industry-wide challenge," the app wrote in the blog post. "We want to work with others in our industry, and with governments, to establish clear criteria to verify this."
He said that if a user chooses to send a photo of their ID to confirm their age to Instagram, the photo will be deleted after 30 days.
Instagram has come under fire from parents and critics who say it exposes minors to harmful content, so in 2019 Instagram began checking users' ages to prevent people under 13 from creating accounts.
In August, the Instagram application began asking existing users to provide their dates of birth.
In September, Facebook stopped launching Instagram Kids, a version of the app it was designing for children under the age of 13.
Other social media companies are also scanning users' faces to prevent minors from using their platforms.
And the French social network Yubo said in May that it had partnered with the start-up "Yute" to take pictures of users' faces to identify minors.
The Chinese company Tencent also said last January that it would study users' faces when logging in in order to limit children's playing time on its platform.