## AI to the Rescue: Meta's New Age-Verification Strategy **Meta** is implementing an AI-driven system to bolster its age-verification processes on **Instagram** and **Facebook**. The system analyzes images and videos for "visual cues," such as height and bone structure, aiming to identify and remove accounts belonging to users under the age of 13. This initiative is part of a broader AI-based security strategy designed to overcome the limitations of current methods that heavily rely on self-reported age. The company aims to reduce the ease with which minors access platforms theoretically restricted to them. In a press release, **Meta** detailed the implementation of tools to identify contextual indicators to estimate a user's age. This includes analyzing posts, comments, bios, and descriptions, with a focus on references to school years or birthday celebrations. These tools complement automated analysis techniques that detect physical traits from imagery, such as height and bone structure. **Meta** emphasizes that this is not facial recognition; it does not seek to identify specific individuals. Instead, it combines visual insights with text and interaction analysis to improve the detection and removal of underage accounts. If **Meta** suspects an account is managed by a child under 13, it will be suspended, requiring the user to revalidate their age. Failure to do so results in permanent deletion of the profile. **Meta** also plans to expand its technology to detect users between 13 and 15, automatically assigning them teen accounts with content restrictions and parental controls enabled by default. ## Expanding the Rollout Having begun implementing age-verification tech in 2024 for **Instagram** users in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, **Meta** will extend the mechanism to **Instagram** accounts in Brazil and 27 European Union countries. Furthermore, these practices will be applied to **Facebook** users in the US for the first time, with plans to expand to the EU and UK next month. ## Pressure from Regulators The new measures are viewed as a response to a preliminary ruling by the European Commission, which found **Meta** in breach of the Digital Services Act for failing to effectively prevent children under 13 from using its platforms. The EU body criticized the company's lack of robust mechanisms to block such access and the insufficiency of its current account identification and suspension systems. These criticisms are supported by a survey by the nonprofit **Internet Matters**, which revealed that approximately one-third of children in the UK have successfully bypassed age restrictions on social networking sites. The report, titled “The Online Safety Act: Are Children Safe Online?” indicated that 46 percent of 9- to 16-year-olds believe circumventing age controls is easy, with 32 percent admitting to doing so. Common techniques include registering with a false date of birth, using older individuals' IDs, submitting verification videos with adult faces, using video game characters, and even drawing on mustaches to deceive automated systems. In its official blog, **Meta** suggests legislation that mandates app stores to verify user ages and establish parental approval systems, with the intention of sharing this information with apps and developers for a centralized and privacy-preserving age assurance system.