Overview
- This week Meta turned on an AI system across all Instagram accounts that aims to identify likely minors and apply account-level protections.
- The system uses multimodal signals — analyses of photos and videos for body and facial features plus scans of captions, comments, bios and contact cues — to estimate a user’s age.
- Accounts the AI classifies as under 13 are automatically blocked and accounts classified as 13–17 are converted into Teen‑Accounts with limits on messaging, visibility and daily use.
- Meta says the tool does not perform face recognition or collect biometric identifiers and that users can appeal errors by submitting regionally valid identity documents.
- The rollout follows months of tests and heavy legal pressure in the United States and Europe, and Meta is urging app stores to provide a device‑level age signal as a simpler privacy‑preserving alternative.