If Instagram is asking for your birthday, you are not alone, it has asked for my birthday as well, here I have explained why Instagram is asking for the birthdays of its users.
To stay ahead in the race of user experience, social media applications are on a constant roll. From Facebook and Instagram to TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter, all major social media platforms are constantly evolving to further improve their services.
Social media applications are also coming up with new guidelines to improve privacy. This time a new Instagram update has baffled the users. The popular social media platform Instagram has asked its users to share their birthdays and users are curious to know the reason.
Instagram also sent me a notification asking for my birthday thus I decided to know the reason why it needed it. Here is everything I found about Instagram’s requirement of providing birthdays.
Why Is Instagram Asking For Birthday?
As soon as users log into their accounts, they are receiving a message on top of their feed which asks the users to provide their birthday. Following this notification, several users are inquiring about it on several social media platforms.
The pop-up notification that appears at the top read, “Add Your Birthday”. The notification comes up accompanied by another message that reads, “We’re asking for this info to help protect our community. We’ll use your birthday to help personalise your experience”.
Alongside the notification a call-to-action button appears, upon tapping this button users can then add their birthday.
Well, this isn’t the first time Instagram has asked its users to provide their birthdays. The notification actually started popping up in 2019. But from August 2021 the platform has started enforcing this rule on the users.
According to the guidance provided by Instagram, this rule is enforced to make the platform a safer place for its users. So, to use Instagram users must now enter their birthdays.
All the new users who are trying to create a new handle will be asked to provide their birthdays while initiating their accounts. While the existing users will receive a notification to add their birthdays.
Why Users Must Tell Their Birthday To Instagram
While talking about this new rule, Instagram wrote in one of their blog posts:
“We’ve been clear that we want to do more to create safer, more private experiences for young people. To do that we need to know how old everybody is on Instagram, so we’ve started asking people to share their birthday with us if they haven’t shared it previously.”
They further added, “This information allows us to create new safety features for young people, and helps ensure we provide the right experiences to the right age group”.
Instagram further revealed that using birthdays will be able to provide personalized content for its users. They will personalize the user experience by showing them relevant ads.
Some users are asking if it is mandatory to add the birthday. Well, you can ignore the message but it will keep popping up as you log into your account.
You may also get to a point where you will be required to add your birthday to continue using your account.
Here is what Instagram further revealed about the notification, “First, we’ll start to ask you for your birthday when you open Instagram. We’ll show you a notification a handful of times and if you haven’t provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you’ll need to share it to continue using Instagram”.
“This information is necessary for new features we’re developing to protect young people”, it further added.
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The Bottom Line
This was what I have explored following why the Instagram notification was asking for my birthday. Hopefully, you have got all the essential information about this pop-up notification.