Meta is taking the AI tool it uses to guess whether an Instagram user is a teenager to every country. If the system suspects an account belongs to a teen, the account is moved into Teen Account protections even when it was set up with an adult birthday.
A Teen Account restricts who can message a teenager, filters what they are shown and caps their screen time, and exists on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. The expansion is described as global. Meta says it is encouraged by the results so far and calls the global rollout one that will reach “millions more teens”.
Meta’s announcement says the same technology is still being rolled out on Facebook. A similar system is due to start on Threads later this year. Meta does not say which countries get it first, so it cannot be assumed to reach every account on the same day.
The change follows a settlement Meta reached with 52 US state and territory attorneys general from both parties. Meta says that deal commits it to sharper detection of under-13s, and of 13 to 17-year-olds who signed up as adults.
In Australia, Instagram has also begun using Apple’s age-range signal. When a parent sets up an iPhone for a teenager, the App Store can confirm the person’s age range, and Apple passes that range to an app each time the teen downloads it. Meta calls its use of the signal a voluntary step. Its complaint is that teens will get uneven protection across apps until the law makes app stores collect age and parental consent, and makes every developer act on it.
Parents in the United States will start seeing an in-feed video on Instagram this month explaining how Meta checks age. It links to an article by internet safety advocate Larry Magid, which Meta says is open to parents anywhere. Meta also asks TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same practices.
Meta says it wants lawmakers to be more specific. Many of the new national rules on teen safety online tell platforms to keep young users out of adult features but do not say how age should be established. Some of them effectively demand invasive checks for every user, while others give no guidance at all. Meta says it would rather not collect sensitive data such as government ID, and presents estimation as the lighter option.
It also says its own estimates could serve as a backstop. If a teen’s real age differs from what the app store reported, Meta’s correction could be fed back to the store and carried across every app the teen uses.
For parents, Meta’s pitch is that a teenager is placed in age-appropriate settings wherever the family lives, without anyone having to confirm a birthday by hand.
Meta’s announcement does not mention Pakistan or any other country by name, and it gives no date for when the expansion will have finished reaching all accounts.
