Source : TechCrunch
MENLO PARK, California, November 9, 2026 – Meta has announced that it is expanding the artificial intelligence technology Instagram uses to estimate users’ ages to every market worldwide, in a move it says will place “millions more teens” into its Teen Account protections. The announcement, made on Monday, was reported by TechCrunch, Reuters and The Verge.
Meta says the system looks for people it suspects to be teenagers, even if they signed up with an adult birthday, and moves them into Teen Accounts. Those accounts apply stricter settings by default: teens can receive direct messages only from people they follow or are already connected to, harmful comments are hidden, and accounts are private by default. Teen Accounts are available on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
According to TechCrunch, the age-estimation tools analyse entire profiles for contextual clues, such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades. These signals are drawn from several formats, including posts, comments, bios and captions, and the system also considers visual cues from photos and videos, such as a person’s height or bone structure.
The company said it is continuing to roll out the same technology on Facebook and plans to begin launching similar technology globally on Threads later this year. The Verge reported that the AI age-assurance updates had previously launched in the United States, the European Union and Brazil.
Meta also said it has begun using Apple’s age-range signal in Australia as an additional way to understand a user’s age. Under that process, when a parent sets up a smartphone for a teenager, the app store can confirm the user’s age range and pass it to apps such as Instagram when they are downloaded. Meta argues that, as long as sharing and using such a signal remains optional, teens will receive inconsistent protections across apps, and it repeated its support for laws requiring age verification and parental consent at the app-store level.
In the United States, parents will start seeing an in-feed video on Instagram this month explaining how Meta places teens into age-appropriate protections and how they can help ensure their teenager’s age is accurate. The video will link to an article by internet safety advocate Larry Magid, president and chief executive of ConnectSafely, which Meta says is available to parents worldwide.
The expansion comes as Meta faces numerous lawsuits accusing its platforms of harming young users. Reuters reported that in August the company reached settlements worth up to US$18 billion with nearly every US state and territory to resolve cases brought by attorneys general. As part of the agreement with 52 bipartisan attorneys general, Meta agreed to strengthen how it identifies teenagers and children under 13. The company says the technology announced this week builds on those commitments.
The Verge also issued a correction on Monday noting that the AI age-estimation expansion places teen users into Teen Account settings and is separate from the process used to detect and remove accounts belonging to children under 13.
For users, the practical effect is that a teenager who entered a false adult birth date may now find their Instagram account switched to a Teen Account without having asked for it. Meta says this is intended to give parents peace of mind wherever they live.
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