Expanding Digital Protection
Meta has announced the expansion of its AI-powered age estimation technology for users to cover the entire world, in a move aimed at identifying teenagers who did not disclose their real ages during registration. This expansion follows the launch of the technology in the United States, the European Union, and Brazil over the past year, which will lead to the automatic inclusion of millions of additional users within the "Teen Accounts" system.
How Age Estimation Technology Works
The tool relies on examining various digital signals to determine whether a user is under the age of eighteen, even if they registered using a fake birth date. Once a user is identified as a teenager, stricter restrictions are activated, including:
- Making the account private by default.
- Restricting content that teenagers can access.
- Preventing strangers from sending direct messages (DMs) to teenage users.
The company has also begun incorporating additional signals to estimate age, such as utilizing operating system data (Apple age-range signal) in Australia to enhance monitoring accuracy.
What Changes Practically?
This step is part of Meta's commitment to enhancing age verification practices, a commitment that followed a $17.1 billion legal settlement last August. Practically speaking, users aged 16 or younger cannot modify account settings without the consent of parents or guardians, who will receive supervisory tools to set time limits and monitor usage. The company plans to transfer these technologies to the Facebook platform, with the rollout of similar tools for the Threads platform beginning later this year.
Technical Clarification
It is important to note that this technology is dedicated to enforcing "Teen Accounts" restrictions on users aged 13 to 17, which is a completely separate process from the procedures for monitoring and deleting users under the age of 13, which are subject to different mechanisms.