Insider Brief
- Meta said it is expanding AI systems designed to identify underage users and automatically place suspected teens into stricter safety settings across Instagram and Facebook.
- The company said its AI tools analyze account activity, posts, captions and visual cues in photos and videos to detect users who may be younger than the age listed on their accounts, with suspected underage accounts subject to verification or deactivation.
- Meta is expanding Teen Account protections on Instagram to 27 European Union countries and Brazil while introducing the system to Facebook in the U.S., alongside broader use of AI-assisted moderation and renewed calls for app store-level age verification requirements.
Meta announced it is expanding the use of AI systems designed to identify underage users and automatically place suspected teens into stricter safety settings across Instagram and Facebook.
The company said it is strengthening enforcement against users under 13 by using AI tools that analyze profiles, posts, captions and other account activity for signals suggesting someone may be younger than the age listed on their account. Meta said accounts identified as potentially underage can be deactivated pending age verification.
Meta is also adding AI-based visual analysis technology that examines photos and videos for general indicators of age. The company said the system is not facial recognition technology and instead looks for broader visual cues that may help estimate whether a user is likely underage.
The effort expands Meta’s broader “Teen Accounts” system, which places younger users into default safety settings that restrict who can contact them and limit certain types of content. Meta said it is expanding automatic Teen Account protections on Instagram to 27 countries in the European Union and Brazil, while also extending the technology to Facebook in the U.S. for the first time.
The company said it has already enrolled hundreds of millions of teens into Teen Accounts across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger since the feature launched in 2024.
Meta said it is also simplifying tools for reporting underage accounts and increasingly using AI systems to review those reports alongside human moderation teams. According to the company, the AI-assisted review process has shown higher accuracy and faster response times in testing than relying on human review alone.
In addition, Meta said it will begin sending notifications to parents in the U.S. on Facebook and Instagram with guidance on confirming teens’ ages and discussing online age honesty with children.
The company reiterated its position that app stores should take a larger role in age verification and suggested there should be legislation mandating it. Meta said centralized age verification at the operating system or app store level would create more consistent protections across apps rather than requiring each platform to independently determine users’ ages.
