Meta to Deploy AI to Find, Remove Underage Accounts
Meta Platforms Inc. announced plans to deploy artificial intelligence systems to identify and deactivate accounts belonging to underage users across its social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, according to ABC7 San Francisco.
The initiative will use AI-powered age verification technology to detect accounts held by users who do not meet the platforms’ minimum age requirements, automatically flagging and removing those accounts.
The announcement comes amid intensifying regulatory pressure on Meta and other social media companies over child safety. Attorneys general from dozens of U.S. states have pursued legal action against Meta, alleging the company’s platforms harm young users. Federal lawmakers have also advanced multiple bills aimed at strengthening child safety protections online, including proposals for mandatory age verification on social media platforms.
Meta has faced persistent criticism from child safety advocates and legislators who argue the company has not done enough to prevent children under 13 — the minimum age set by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — from creating accounts. Critics have long contended that self-reported birthdates are easily circumvented by young users.
By turning to AI for enforcement, Meta is attempting to address a problem that manual moderation and self-reported age data have failed to solve at scale. According to the report, the company’s AI systems would analyze behavioral signals and other data points to estimate whether an account belongs to a minor, though specific technical details of the verification process were not disclosed.
The move also arrives as the broader tech industry grapples with how to balance user privacy against the need for more robust age verification. Privacy advocates have raised concerns that AI-based age estimation tools could introduce new surveillance risks or lead to false positives that lock legitimate adult users out of their accounts.
Meta’s decision to automate underage account enforcement using AI would expand the application of the technology beyond content moderation into direct account-level policy enforcement.
