Meta is taking its AI-powered age verification system global on Instagram, seeking to catch teenage users who may have misrepresented their age during signup and automatically transition them into Teen Accounts with stricter safeguards. The system scans for behavioral and account signals indicating someone is under 18, then applies the protective restrictions without waiting for manual verification.
Teen Accounts, which exist across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, limit contact options for minors, curate their content feeds and impose usage time restrictions. The rollout is continuing on Facebook, with plans to introduce the technology to Threads users worldwide before the year ends.
Alongside the technical expansion, Meta is launching educational resources for US parents beginning this month. Instagram users who are parents will encounter videos in their feeds describing how the company assigns teenagers to age-appropriate experiences and what steps they can take to verify their child's actual age.
In Australia, Meta has begun incorporating Apple's age-range data as part of its verification toolkit. When parents request age verification through the App Store, Apple transmits an age bracket to applications including Instagram when teenagers install them.
Meta has consistently advocated for legislative frameworks that mandate app store age verification and parental authorization. The company contends that having a unified, device-level age signal shared across all applications would prove more reliable and preserve user privacy better than requiring each platform to conduct independent verification. The company has similarly urged TikTok and YouTube to embrace this model.
The technology debuted in the US, UK, Canada and Australia before expanding to Brazil and all 27 EU nations in May.
The initiative arrives amid mounting legal pressure on Meta regarding youth safety. In August, the company finalized settlements totaling up to $18 billion with nearly all US states and territories. The agreement with 52 state attorneys general requires Meta to strengthen its methods for recognizing teenagers and children under 13. Additionally, Meta resolved a case brought by a teenager in Los Angeles that examined whether Instagram and Facebook were engineered to foster addiction. Earlier this year, a New Mexico jury determined Meta failed to safeguard children from predatory behavior on its platforms, awarding $375 million in damages.
Source: The Next Web
