Meta to Use AI to Detect Users’ Ages, Accounts Could Be Blocked

Meta, the technology company behind Facebook and Instagram, plans to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to identify and remove user profiles under the age of 13. Thirteen is the minimum age to create an account on these social media platforms.

“We want young people to have a safe and positive online experience,” Meta said in a press release in early May when announcing the move.

As part of the effort, the company said that it would continue to look for ways to identify accounts genuinely belonging to users who are not old enough for the platform, but who registered with a false date of birth to look older.

The company will “use AI technology to analyse entire profiles to look for contextual cues, such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grade level, to determine whether an account is likely owned by a user under the age of consent,” the press release stated. “We are looking for these signals in various formats, such as posts, comments, bios, and captions.”

Meta’s plan to use its own AI, branded “Meta AI”, to hunt for under-13 users was announced a few days after the European Commission released early findings that Meta had failed to “prevent children under 13 from using Instagram and Facebook” in the European Union.

Meta AI will search for skeletal structures that resemble children

Meta said the AI would use contextual cues, such as posts about school grade level or birthday party photos. But the AI would also evaluate factors such as height and facial bone structure in photos, a practice some regard as “invasive.”

Nina Kolleck, Professor of Educational Theory and Socialisation at the University of Potsdam, who has written a book about teenagers and social media titled Battle in the Minds (currently only available in German), told DW that Meta would need to build “a very broad age-based data profile” before it could identify and remove under-age users.

“AI needs data to learn so that it can draw conclusions about age and behaviour,” Kolleck said.

A company spokesperson told DW that Meta is not currently using data from children under 13 to train their AI.

But Andy Przybylski, Professor of Human and Technology Behaviour at the University of Oxford, told DW: “This is a very popular and very wrong idea that by collecting and processing data, faces and the behaviour of young people invasively, we can keep them safe.”

“What actually happens is the creation of a verified advertising target list,” Przybylski said.

Age restrictions on social media remain a matter of debate

Meta’s latest move is just one development in an ongoing discussion about teenagers and social media use.

Australia and Indonesia recently enacted laws prohibiting anyone under 16 from using Meta platforms and other social media sites such as TikTok.

In the EU, countries such as Germany, France and Poland are also considering similar steps. However, the idea of age limits is not without critics.

“There are real factors on these platforms that threaten healthy adolescent development: endless scrolling… unilateral recommendations encouraging beauty-focused use and triggering self-comparison or discriminatory content,” said Stephan Dreyer, a senior legal and media governance researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Germany.

Dreyer told DW that regulation should target characteristics of the platform such as Instagram itself, not set a minimum age for users.

A ban on social media for teenagers is seen as akin to “abstinence education”

Przybylski argued that age restrictions are not the right solution. Instead, he supports privacy regulation that prevents collection of data from users under 18, as well as better media literacy education for young people and their parents.

Forbidding teenagers from using social media until a certain age “uses the same logic as abstinence-based sex education,” said Przybylski. “We would also not automatically grant a licence just because someone reaches a certain age; they need to learn first.”

Teenagers themselves are also sceptical of the idea. A representative UNICEF Germany survey in April 2026 showed that 74% of teenagers aged 14–16 rejected a ban on social media for users under 16.

UNICEF Germany spokesperson, Katja Sodomann, said that much of life today takes place on social media, and restricting teenagers’ access would limit their right to participate in social life.

“That especially applies to teenagers from vulnerable or minority groups,” she told DW. “A refugee background may mean they cannot communicate with friends or family in their country of origin without social media. LGBTQ+ youth may find communities online. Teenagers with disabilities who have limited mobility can use social media to stay connected with friends.”

“I cannot imagine Meta will delete that data”

Nadia, 42, a mother of two in the northern city of Bremen, Germany. Her 12-year-old son does not use social media, but her almost-15-year-old daughter has an Instagram account.

Nadia herself is active on social media, both personally and for work, so she is aware of viral trends when they appear. She does not believe in age-based social media bans, and says media literacy is much more important, especially for parents of teenagers. Yet she feels uncomfortable with the idea of Meta AI analysing social media accounts to filter out under-13 users.

“I find this very problematic,” Nadia said. “Meta”