Meta Takes Instagram AI Age Estimation Global for Teens

Meta said it will expand AI age estimation on Instagram globally, moving users it suspects are teens into Teen Account protections even when the birthday they entered on the service says they are adults. The company's announcement says it uses the technology 'to find people we suspect to be teens, even if they use an adult birthday,' pushing those accounts into default-private profiles with stricter contact and content limits.

The signals, as described by Meta and relayed by The Verge, are a mix of behavioural and visual: the profiles and types of content a user interacts with, birthday greetings, and 'visual cues in uploaded photos and videos.' Accounts the system judges to be under 13 are removed from the platforms, while teen-age users land in a Teen Account with restrictive defaults on contact, content and time. Users who believe they were misclassified can change their settings, which is how Meta acknowledges its own error rate without publishing one.

In the United States, Meta said parents will begin receiving an Instagram notification this month explaining the age assessment process, with an in-feed video and an article by Larry Magid of ConnectSafely laying out the approach. In Australia, the company has started using Apple's age-range signal, which lets the App Store pass a user's approximate age to developers, as an additional input. Facebook and Threads are next.

The expansion builds on earlier rollouts including the United States, the European Union and Brazil, and lands amid state-level pressure that pushed the company to tighten age assurance.