Meta rolls out automated age checks for teens globally

Social media giant Meta is expanding automated age-estimation technology globally starting this month following billion-dollar legal settlements and criticism that its platforms fail to protect teenagers from online harms.

“We use AI technology to find people we suspect to be teens, even if they use an adult birthday, and place them in Teen Account protections,” the company said in an announcement on Monday.

“Since first introducing this technology, we’ve been placing more teens in age-appropriate protections and are encouraged by the results. Based on that success, today we’re expanding this technology globally.”

Teen accounts have more restrictions and protections, limiting contacts, types of content and users’ time. Teens often circumvent the restrictions by creating a fake birthday when they set up an account, raising concerns that minors could bypass parental controls and be exposed to harmful content.

Parents in the United States who have set up Instagram for teenagers will receive notifications this month about the new measures. Meta said it will expand the age estimation algorithm to Facebook and Threads later in the year.

The AI technology, which the company has been testing in several countries, including the US, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, analyses user behaviour and posts to estimate the person’s age.

Parents can open accounts for children and categorise them as restricted teen accounts. But the age-estimation feature can also now automatically place accounts in the category, even if it was set up using a manually entered birthday that would have falsely made a user seem like an adult.

Meta has several categories of restrictions based on age. Children under 13 years of age are banned from using the apps. Teenagers are reminded to leave Instagram after 60 minutes of activity, and notifications are muted at night, when they would usually be sleeping.

Teen accounts face a two-hour-a-day usage limit as well, and are blocked from seeing “social comparison” features such as likes and reactions to other teen accounts.

The social media giant has faced growing legal action worldwide over how its platforms are used by teenagers. Child development experts have said platforms like Instagram and Facebook are highly addictive for young people, can reinforce social pressures through reactions to posts and expose them to other harmful content online.

Australia passed a ban on anyone below 16 years of age from using social media platforms last year. But this month, several groups, including the advocacy group Digital Freedom Project and the social media website Reddit, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of that law, as well as the scientific rationale behind trying to keep children entirely off of platforms like YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.

In the US, Meta faced lawsuits from attorneys general across the US over the alleged harmful impact of its platforms on children, with Meta agreeing to improve how it identifies minors and children as part of the settlement.

The states alleged that Meta’s platforms “encourage addictive behaviour, fail to verify users’ ages, encourage adolescents to bypass parental controls, and inadequately safeguard against harmful content and/or intentionally amplify harmful and exploitative content”.

In August, the company agreed to pay $18bn to the states and institute a slew of changes to how it allows teenagers to interact with its platforms that could only be removed by parents or guardians.

The changes include restricting under-18 users to two hours a day on the platforms and enforcing a nighttime curfew from midnight to 6am. Default settings will restrict “social comparison” features such as seeing likes and reactions on posts, and “cosmetic procedure filters” that alter a person’s appearance. Push notifications will be blocked for teen accounts between 8am and 3pm, when they are likely to be in school.

Teen users will be encouraged to take breaks, with prompts appearing after every 15 minutes of continuous usage, and when daily usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes.

Parents and guardians will receive updates on teen account activities and be notified whenever they message an adult for the first time. Searches for topics like suicide, self-harm or eating disorders would also trigger a notification to parents.

In announcing the new automated age estimation on Monday, Meta also repeated calls for other industry leaders to implement similar changes.

“As Instagram is just one of the many apps teens use, we’re also calling on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt these same practices to keep teens safe,” Meta said in its statement.