Signing up for a social media account with a fake birthday isn’t exactly new. Teens have done it for years, often to bypass age restrictions or access features they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to use. Meta knows this is a problem, and it’s now taking its efforts to identify these accounts a step further.
The company has announced that it’s expanding its AI-powered age detection technology globally on Instagram. The idea is to identify accounts that likely belong to teenagers, even when they’ve entered an adult birthday, and automatically apply the platform’s existing safety protections. Meta says the expansion could bring these protections to millions of additional teenagers worldwide.
Instagram won’t just take your birthday at face value
Instagram already has Teen Accounts, which restrict who can contact younger users, what content they can see, and how much time they spend on the platform. Facebook and Messenger also offer similar protections. The problem, however, is that these safeguards depend on users being honest about their age. A teenager who signs up claiming to be 20 could potentially avoid restrictions meant for someone under 18.
That’s where Meta’s AI technology comes in. Rather than relying entirely on the birthday entered during registration, the company uses AI to identify accounts it suspects belong to teenagers and move them into the appropriate protected experience. Meta has already used this approach, but the latest announcement means it’s now expanding it worldwide on Instagram. The technology is also being rolled out on Facebook, while Threads is expected to receive similar age-detection capabilities globally later this year. The company is also working on improving how it identifies accounts belonging to children under 13, who aren’t permitted to use its platforms.
Meta also wants Apple and other platforms to help
Interestingly, Meta doesn’t believe individual apps should be solely responsible for figuring out how old their users are. In Australia, the company has started using an age-range signal provided by Apple. When parents set up an iPhone for their child, they can allow Apple to share an age bracket with app developers. This gives apps such as Instagram another way to determine whether someone meets their age requirements without requiring an exact birth date.
Meta wants this kind of system to become more widely adopted. It argues that having app stores verify ages and share that information across apps could offer more consistent protections while reducing the need for separate identity checks. The announcement also follows Meta’s agreement with 52 bipartisan attorneys general in the US to strengthen protections for younger users. The company is encouraging competitors, including TikTok and YouTube, to take similar steps. For parents, the biggest change is that Instagram will no longer rely quite so heavily on the age their children claim to be. Of course, how accurately the AI identifies teenagers will matter just as much as how widely Meta rolls it out.