EU Commission Urges Instagram and Facebook to Block Underage Users

Following a two-year investigation, the European Commission announced today that Meta is breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to prevent minors under 13 from accessing its Facebook and Instagram platforms. In its preliminary findings, the EU regulator determined that Meta’s current measures to keep minors are too easy to circumvent, and its tool for reporting minors is also lackluster.

To comply with the DSA, Meta must protect minors from age-inappropriate experiences on its platforms. However, the EU Commission pointed out that minors under 13 can easily enter a false birth date when creating an account on Facebook and Instagram, “with no effective controls in place to check the correctness of the self-declared date of birth.”

The regulator added that even after reporting a minor on Facebook and Instagram, a process that requires “up to seven clicks just to access the reporting form,” there are no immediate consequences. “There often is no proper follow-up, and the reported minor can simply continue to use the service without any type of check,” the Commission explained.

“At this stage, the Commission considers that Instagram and Facebook must change their risk assessment methodology, in order to evaluate which risks arise on Instagram and Facebook in the European Union, and how they manifest. Moreover, Instagram and Facebook need to strengthen their measures to prevent, detect and remove minors under the age of 13 from their service,” the EU regulator said today.

While Meta can respond to the Commission’s preliminary findings, the company may face a fine of up to 6% of its global annual turnover if the regulator ultimately issues a non-compliance ruling. Speaking to The Guardian, a Meta spokesperson said that the company continues to “engage constructively” with the EU Commission, adding that underage users accessing online platforms was “an industry-wide challenge, which requires an industry-wide solution”

“We’re clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older and we have measures in place to detect and remove accounts from anyone under that age. We continue to invest in technologies to find and remove underage users and will have more to share next week about additional measures rolling out soon,” the company’s spokesperson said.