Meta is expanding its use of artificial intelligence to identify Instagram users it suspects are teenagers, including those who registered with an adult birth date, and move them into accounts with built-in safety restrictions. The global expansion comes amid mounting lawsuits and follows an agreement with 52 attorneys general covering commitments to strengthen the company’s identification of younger users.
The technology is intended to bring more teenagers into Instagram’s Teen Account protections without relying solely on the age they enter when signing up. Those protections limit who can contact teens, the content they encounter and their time on the service. Meta said it expects millions more teenagers worldwide to receive the safeguards through the expansion.
The company is also continuing to introduce the technology on Facebook and plans to begin a global launch of similar technology on Threads later this year. Its announcement did not provide technical details about how the AI determines a user’s likely age or figures measuring its accuracy. The results of age-estimation systems matter because errors can leave younger users without safeguards or place adults under restrictions intended for teenagers.
The rollout builds on Meta’s recent agreement with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general representing U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia. Meta described its commitments as including stronger technology to detect accounts that may belong to children under 13, alongside improvements in identifying users ages 13 to 17 who should receive teen-specific protections.
These are distinct age-assurance tasks: identifying children who are below a platform’s minimum age and determining which eligible users should have a more restricted experience. A birth date entered by the account holder cannot reliably resolve either issue when users provide inaccurate information. Age estimation offers an additional check, but it is not the same as confirming a date of birth through documentary evidence.
Meta is also testing a separate source of age information in Australia, where it has begun using Apple’s age-range signal. Under the process described by Meta, parents setting up a smartphone for a teenager can choose to have the app store establish an age range for the device’s user. Apple can then share that range with developers when an app is downloaded, helping them determine whether the user meets its age requirement.
Participation in that system remains optional. Meta supports legislation requiring age verification and parental consent at the app-store level, arguing that a shared device-based signal would reduce the need for individual services to conduct their own checks. That is the company’s policy position, rather than an established conclusion about which approach provides the strongest privacy or safety protections.
The broader challenge for age-assurance systems is balancing reliable identification with limits on the collection of sensitive personal information. Different approaches can involve different trade-offs, and the announcement did not establish how Meta’s expanded AI checks compare with other verification methods.
Alongside the technical changes, Meta plans to show U.S. parents an Instagram feed video this month explaining its approach to age protections. The video will direct them to an article by ConnectSafely President and CEO Larry Magid about age assurance and steps parents can take to help ensure their teenagers provide accurate ages online.
Sources: Reuters, Meta Newsroom