Meta is launching a new age verification system supported by artificial intelligence to detect users under the age of 13 on Facebook and Instagram. The company will try to understand whether the account belongs to a child by analyzing height, bone structure and similar visual clues in photos and videos. Meta states that this method is not facial recognition, the system does not identify the person in the image and only evaluates visual signals for general age estimation.
Meta will remove accounts under the age of 13 with artificial intelligence. Meta’s new system is part of the company’s broader security approach, which it calls age assurance. On Facebook and Instagram, users must be at least 13 years old. For this reason, the company has been identifying accounts that it believes are under the age of 13 for a long time and removing them from the platforms. In the new era, this process will not only depend on the date of birth or profile texts declared by the users.
The company says that artificial intelligence will examine the entire profile contextually. Birthday celebrations, school class information, comments, biography texts, post descriptions and different interactions are among the signals to be used in this evaluation. Meta will spread this technology to different areas within the application such as Instagram Reels, Instagram Live and Facebook Groups. The most striking innovation is on the visual analysis side.
According to Meta’s statement, artificial intelligence will look for age clues in photos and videos that cannot be captured by text. Height, bone structure, and general visual themes are among the examples used in this analysis. The company emphasizes that the system does not recognize a specific person, that is, it does not work like facial recognition technology. If Meta detects that an account may belong to a user under the age of 13, it will disable the account.
The account owner will need to go through the company’s age verification process to prevent the account from being deleted. During this process, the user will be asked to prove his age. The new visual analysis system is currently working in selected countries. Meta continues to work to make this feature more widely available. Although some of the artificial intelligence developments used by the company for age determination are active worldwide, more advanced features such as visual analysis are currently used in limited regions.
Meta also states that age detection is not limited to automatic systems only. The company facilitates account notifications made by the community for under 13s. Notification flows within the application and in the Help Center are simplified. In the process of evaluating these notifications, artificial intelligence models will also take part in addition to human review teams. According to Meta, these models will provide faster results by applying the same evaluation criteria to each notification.
The company is also working on measures that will make it harder for users suspected of being under 13 to bypass the system by opening a new account. This step is positioned as an additional layer of security to prevent closed accounts from returning to the platform with different information. In Meta’s statement, the scope of “Teen Accounts” protections for young users is also expanded. The technology, which automatically puts stricter protection settings on Instagram accounts that are thought to be young people, even if they have an adult birth date, is spreading to 27 countries in the European Union and Brazil.
This system was previously rolled out for Instagram in the US, Australia, Canada and the UK. The Teen Accounts system puts young users in a more protected experience by default. In this context, accounts can become private, users can only receive messages from people they follow or are connected to, and harmful comments can be hidden. Meta is using the same technology on Facebook in the US for the first time. Facebook expansion for the United Kingdom and the European Union will begin in June.
The company is also making parents a part of the age verification process. Meta will begin sending notifications to parents via Facebook and Instagram in the US this month. These notifications will explain how to check young people’s age information and why accurate age declaration is important online. Meta’s Family Center tools will be accessible worldwide. Meta’s current age security systems also include estimating the user’s age from their behavior within the application and reviewing community notifications.
The company may request additional verification if it suspects a user is misrepresenting their age to evade protection settings. For example, if a user wants to change their date of birth from under 18 to over 18, they may need to verify their identity document or Yoti’s facial age estimation tools.
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