Instagram Now Uses AI Worldwide to Flag Teens Who Lied About Their Age

Meta says its AI finds users it suspects are teens, even those with an adult birthday, and moves them into restricted Teen Accounts.

Lying about your age on Instagram just got harder everywhere.

Meta announced Monday that it's taking the age-estimation system global. The company says that'll put "millions more teens" into its locked-down Teen Accounts, including kids who signed up with an adult birthday. The Verge reported that the tools look for signals that a user is under 18.

Accounts belonging to kids under 13, Instagram's minimum age, get removed through what Meta says is a separate process. Users it pegs as 13 to 17 are moved into Teen Accounts, which The Verge said are private by default, limit what teens see and block DMs from strangers. Users 16 or younger can't loosen those settings without a parent's OK.

For California, the guess carries more weight. The state is one of 52 states, territories and the District of Columbia whose attorneys general signed an August agreement with Meta. Meta says that deal gives under-18s on Instagram and Facebook a default two-hour daily limit that only a parent can lift, plus a block on the apps from midnight to 6 a.m. Meta frames the global rollout as part of what it promised there: sharper tools for spotting both teens and kids under 13. When the birthday on file says adult, the AI is how Meta decides who counts as under 18.

Meta's own announcement also makes the case for a different way of checking age. It says one verified age from a phone's app store, shared with every app, is "far more effective and privacy-preserving" than each platform working out ages on its own. In Australia, Meta has started using Apple's age-range signal, which a parent can turn on when setting up a teen's iPhone. Apple then tells each app the teen's age range when they download it. Meta calls its use of that signal voluntary and pitches its own estimates as a backstop for catching mistakes.

So the company that wants app stores to handle age checks is, for now, doing them itself.

U.S. parents will start seeing an in-feed video on Instagram this month that explains the process, Meta says. It links to an article by Larry Magid, the CEO of the internet-safety nonprofit ConnectSafely. Meta says the technology is still rolling out on Facebook and that it plans to launch something similar on Threads worldwide later this year.

Meta is also pressing TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same checks. That's more than a talking point. By Meta's account, about $5.3 billion of the roughly $18 billion the August deal pays states over 10 years gets released only if TikTok and YouTube adopt a one-hour daily limit, night blocks and age checks and each pay a matching amount.

Source: The Verge, retrieved November 9, 2026. Other sources: about.fb.com, about.fb.com (2).