Meta expands AI teen-safety detection to Instagram worldwide

Meta said Monday it’s rolling out its AI age-estimation technology globally, a system designed to catch teenagers who list an adult birthday and place them into Instagram’s Teen Account protections anyway. Teen Accounts automatically limit who can contact a teen, what content they see, and how much time they spend on the app; Meta says it has already been placing more teens into those protections since introducing the technology and is “encouraged” by the results, prompting the global expansion.

Meta says the rollout will continue on Facebook, with similar detection technology planned for Threads globally later this year. The push builds on commitments Meta made in a recent settlement with 52 bipartisan state attorneys general aimed at better identifying teens and children younger than 13 across its apps. This month, US parents will start seeing an in-feed Instagram video explaining Meta’s approach, linking to an article by internet-safety advocate Larry Magid that lays out the company’s age-assurance strategy; Meta says that article is available to parents worldwide.

The mechanism works through the parent’s phone setup: in Australia, Meta has begun relying on Apple’s age-range signal, under which the app store can confirm a teen’s age range when the device is configured, then share that range with app developers, Meta included, every time the teen installs an app. Meta says it’s using that signal voluntarily and argues a single verified, device-level signal shared consistently across apps would be more effective and privacy-preserving than requiring every platform to verify age on its own — while acknowledging that, without wider adoption, teens still get inconsistent protections from app to app. Meta is calling on TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar age-detection practices.

Why it matters

Meta is betting on AI-driven age detection, rather than mandatory ID checks, to satisfy a wave of state and global child-safety rules — and is explicitly asking competitors to match it, since the approach only closes the safety gap for teens if rivals apply it too.