Meta will use AI to estimate age: does not recognise faces, but reads signals in profiles

Meta raises the bar for age verification on Instagram and Facebook. The company announces the extension in the European Union of a technology that tries to detect teenage accounts even when the user declares an adult date of birth. The innovation arrives on Instagram in the 27 EU countries and Brazil; on Facebook it started in the US and, according to Meta, will arrive in the EU and the UK from June 2026.

The technical point is this: Meta says it uses artificial intelligence systems to analyse the account as a whole. Not just the date of birth entered at registration, but signals distributed in posts, comments, bios, captions, interactions. Examples given by the company: references to birthdays, school classes, grades, content posted on Reels, Live and Facebook groups. If the system considers that the account belongs to a person under 13, the account is deactivated and the user must provide proof of age; otherwise it can be deleted.

The most sensitive innovation concerns images. Meta claims to have added visual analysis: photos and videos are examined to derive general clues about age, such as height or physical structure. The company points out that this is not facial recognition: the system, according to Meta, does not identify a person, but estimates a probable age range. This is an important distinction, but it does not close the problem. Because it remains a predictive technology applied to personal content, with margins of error and with real effects on account access.

The second part of the announcement concerns teenagers between 13 and 17 years old. If Meta suspects an account is a teenager's, even if it claims an adult age, it automatically puts it into Teen Accounts protections: limits on contacts, restrictions on visible content, more closed settings for messaging and the overall experience. Meta says it has already applied these systems to hundreds of millions of teen accounts by 2024.

The context is not neutral. On 29 April, the European Commission preliminarily accused Meta of not doing enough to prevent children under 13 from using Facebook and Instagram. Reuters recalls that penalties of up to 6 per cent of annual global turnover can be imposed in case of violation of the Digital Services Act. Meta disputes the preliminary assessments, but today's announcement should also be read within this regulatory pressure.