Meta will start guessing the age of Instagram users – and restricting them if it thinks they are children.
The company is rolling out new AI-powered tools that monitor how people use the app and looks to identify young people who might have signed up for it with a false birthday.
The announcement comes amid increased scrutiny of Meta’s child safety provisions. This summer, for instance, it was at the centre of a major court case in which it was accused of harming the wellbeing of its young users – and it was forced to make a host of wide-ranging changes as a result.
One of the ways that Meta has responded to those criticisms has been to point to its creation of Teen Accounts, which allow people under 18 to use its platforms but with restrictions on who they can contact, what they will see, and how long they spend in the apps. That generally relies on young people or their parents signing up with an accurate date of birth, however.
Meta said that knowing the age of its users “continues to be an industry-wide challenge as some teens may misrepresent their age online to access experiences they’re not old enough to use”. But it said that the new AI tools – which are being rolled out across the world now – can better identify people who might not be adults and put them on Teen Accounts.
Meta has been “encouraged” by initial testing of the feature, which showed more teens being placed into age-appropriate protections, it said. That had led it to roll the technology out globally.
Initially, it will apply only on Instagram. But it is being rolled out on Facebook, too, and similar technology will come to Threads “later this year”.
Meta said explicitly that the change had been made after the agreements that resulted from that court case. As it did then, it called on competitors such as TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same practices.
The company also said that in Australia it is also using a recent update from Apple to understand age. That feature allows parents to set an age range for their children, which apps can then ask for from Apple to ensure that they are showing age appropriate experiences.
But it stressed that doing so was voluntary, and as such warned that it meant teens will “receive inconsistent protections across the many apps they use”. It asked for one verified signal that would be shared with and used by all apps, rather than asking platforms to individually verify the age of their users.
It also complained that recent legislation to protect young children from the dangers of the internet, passed in many countries including most notably Australia, were inconsistent and unclear about how they want developers to check the age of their users. “Some require invasive age checks for everyone, while others offer no guidance at all — leaving companies to figure out how to understand age without unnecessarily collecting sensitive data, like government IDs,” it said.
It claimed that it was setting a “strong standard for age assurance” with the new features. But it warned that “unless other companies follow suit, teens remain inconsistently protected online, defeating the purpose of these laws”, as well as presumably meaning that Meta may fall behind other apps in its popularity among younger users.
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