Expanding Teen Account Protections to Teens Around the World
For more than a decade, we’ve worked with leading experts to build tools and resources to help teens and families have age-appropriate and positive experiences on our apps. Teen Accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger provide teens with a set of built-in protections that automatically limit who can contact them, the content they see, and their time on our apps.
Ensuring all teens receive these protections depends on knowing their age. This continues to be an industry-wide challenge as some teens may misrepresent their age online to access experiences they’re not old enough to use. We use AI technology to find people we suspect to be teens, even if they use an adult birthday, and place them in Teen Account protections. Since first introducing this technology, we’ve been placing more teens in age-appropriate protections and are encouraged by the results. Based on that success, today we’re expanding this technology globally.
As a result, millions more teens across the world who use Instagram will receive these built-in protections, even if they’ve misrepresented their age. For parents, this means greater peace of mind: no matter where you live, we’re making proactive efforts to place your teen into age-appropriate protections — even if they use an adult birthday to set up an account. We’re continuing to roll this technology out on Facebook and, later this year, we’ll begin launching similar technology globally on Threads. This expansion builds on our commitments under our recent agreement with 52 bipartisan attorneys general to strengthen how we identify teens and children under 13 on our apps.
Our Continued Partnership With Parents
This month, parents in the United States will begin to see an in-feed video on Instagram explaining our approach to ensuring their teens are in age-appropriate protections. The video will link to an article, written by Larry Magid, internet safety advocate and President and CEO of ConnectSafely, detailing our multi-layered age assurance approach, which includes keeping children under 13 off our platforms, providing age appropriate experiences for teens, and informing parents about ways they can partner with us to ensure their teens provide the correct age online. The article is available for all parents worldwide to read.
Using Apple’s Age-Range Signal
In Australia, we’ve begun using Apple’s age-range signal as another method to help understand age. The process is simple. When a parent sets up a smartphone for their teen, they have the option for the app store to confirm the age of the person using the device and assign them an age range. Then, each time the teen downloads an app, Apple passes that age range to the developer — Meta, for example — confirming whether the teen meets the app’s age requirement.
We’re voluntarily using this signal, but as long as collecting it and sharing it remains optional for app stores, and using it remains optional for developers, teens will receive inconsistent protections across the many apps they use. We’ve long supported legislation requiring age verification and obtaining parental consent on the app store. One verified signal from people’s devices, shared consistently with all apps, is far more effective and privacy-preserving than asking every platform to verify age individually. And the work developers like Meta do to estimate age can be used as a backstop to help correct mistakes and feed them back to the app store for correction across all the apps a teen uses.
Our Work on Age Assurance Continues
Over the years, countries around the world have rapidly introduced new laws governing how to keep teens safe online. While well-intentioned, many of these laws don’t explain how technology companies should determine a user’s age. Some require invasive age checks for everyone, while others offer no guidance at all — leaving companies to figure out how to understand age without unnecessarily collecting sensitive data, like government IDs. We’ve set a strong standard for age assurance, but unless other companies follow suit, teens remain inconsistently protected online, defeating the purpose of these laws.
We’ll continue to do our part to proactively ensure teens are in age-appropriate experiences on our apps. That’s why as part of our agreement with 52 bipartisan attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia, we’re investing in even stronger technology to proactively catch accounts that may belong to children under 13. We’re also strengthening the technology we use to identify accounts that may belong to teens between the ages of 13 and 17 so we can ensure those accounts are placed in experiences designed for teens, even if they give us an adult birthday. As Instagram is just one of the many apps teens use, we’re also calling on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt these same practices to keep teens safe.
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