Meta Expands its Teen Detection Tools to More Markets

Meta announced today that it’s expanding the use of its age assurance technology to automatically apply Teen Account protections to teenagers who may be lying about their age on its platforms. The company also detailed how it’s using AI technology to analyze user profiles, photos, and videos to identify underage accounts in select markets.

“Since 2024, we’ve enrolled hundreds of millions of teens on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger into Teen Accounts,” Meta emphasized today. To do so, the company started using AI technology last year to proactively find accounts that may belong to teens in the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK.

Meta will now start using this new age assurance technology on Instagram in 27 EU countries and Brazil. The company is also expanding this technology to identify teen accounts on Facebook in the US, with the UK and the EU to follow in June. “We aim to expand this use of the technology on Instagram globally throughout the year,” Meta said today.

Meta’s age assurance technology also uses different signals, such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades, to remove people under 13 from its platforms. Now, the company is also using visual analysis to complete its detection efforts, though the company made it clear that it’s not using facial recognition technology.

“Our AI looks at general themes and visual cues, for example height or bone structure, to estimate someone’s general age; it does not identify the specific person in the image. By combining these visual insights with our analysis of text and interactions, we can significantly increase the number of underage accounts we identify and remove,” Meta said today.

Lastly, after the EU Commission recently urged Instagram and Facebook to do better to remove underage users, Meta is also making it easier to report these accounts on its platforms. The company will also start using AI-driven reviews to supplement the work of its human review teams to speed up the analysis of these reports. “In our testing, this AI-driven review delivers higher accuracy and faster resolutions than human review alone, ensuring that these accounts are addressed with more speed and reliability, the company said today.