Social media giant Meta is expanding its artificial intelligence-powered age-estimation technology worldwide this month amid mounting legal pressure and criticism over its failure to protect teenagers from online harms.
“We use AI technology to find people we suspect to be teens, even if they use an adult birthday, and place them in Teen Account protections,” the company said in a statement on Monday, reports Al Jazeera.
“Since first introducing this technology, we’ve been placing more teens in age-appropriate protections and are encouraged by the results. Based on that success, today we’re expanding this technology globally.”
Teen Accounts come with additional safeguards that restrict who can contact young users, the content they can access and the time they spend on the platforms. However, teenagers have often bypassed these measures by entering false dates of birth when creating accounts, raising concerns that minors could evade parental controls and encounter harmful online material.
Parents in the United States who have set up Instagram accounts for their teenagers will receive notifications about the new measures this month. Meta plans to extend the age-estimation system to Facebook and Threads later this year.
The AI-powered technology, which Meta has been testing in several countries, including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, examines users’ behaviour and posts to estimate their ages.
Although parents can create accounts for their children and designate them as restricted Teen Accounts, the new feature can automatically move suspected teenagers into the category, even when they have entered a false date of birth to appear as adults.
Meta applies different restrictions according to users’ ages. Children under 13 are prohibited from using its apps, while teenagers receive reminders to leave Instagram after 60 minutes of activity. The platform also silences notifications at night during typical sleeping hours.
Teen Accounts also have a daily usage limit of two hours and restrict access to features that encourage social comparison, including likes and reactions to other teenagers’ posts.
Restrictions follow legal action
Meta has faced increasing legal challenges worldwide over the impact of its platforms on teenagers. Child development experts have warned that services such as Instagram and Facebook can be highly addictive for young people, reinforce social pressures through reactions to posts and expose them to harmful online content.
Australia introduced a ban last year preventing people under 16 from using social media platforms. However, several groups, including advocacy organisation Digital Freedom Project and social media platform Reddit, filed a lawsuit this month challenging the law’s constitutionality and the scientific basis for keeping children entirely off platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.
In the United States, Meta faced lawsuits from state attorneys general over the alleged harmful effects of its platforms on children. As part of a settlement, the company agreed to strengthen measures to identify underage users and protect minors.
The states alleged that Meta’s platforms “encourage addictive behaviour, fail to verify users’ ages, encourage adolescents to bypass parental controls, and inadequately safeguard against harmful content and/or intentionally amplify harmful and exploitative content”.
In August, Meta agreed to pay $18bn to the states and introduce a series of changes to how teenagers use its platforms. Parents or guardians would have the authority to remove the restrictions.
Under the changes, users under 18 will face a daily limit of two hours on the platforms, alongside a nighttime curfew from midnight to 6am. Default settings will restrict social comparison features, including likes and reactions to posts, as well as filters that alter users’ appearances through cosmetic procedures.
Push notifications for Teen Accounts will also be disabled between 8am and 3pm, when teenagers are likely to be at school.
The company will encourage young users to take breaks by displaying reminders after every 15 minutes of continuous use and when their daily activity reaches 60 and 90 minutes.
Parents and guardians will receive updates on teenagers’ account activities and notifications when their children contact an adult for the first time. Searches involving suicide, self-harm or eating disorders will also trigger alerts to parents.
Announcing the global expansion of its automated age-estimation technology on Monday, Meta urged other major technology companies to adopt similar safeguards.
“As Instagram is just one of the many apps teens use, we’re also calling on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt these same practices to keep teens safe,” the company said.
