Explainer-Settlement requires Meta to check young users' ages. How will that work?

Meta’s new age-checking obligations stop short of requiring users to submit photo identification or video selfies. Instead, the settlement directs the company to strengthen a broader system for identifying young users on Facebook and Instagram.

The agreement forms part of an $18 billion settlement with U.S. states announced on August 26. It resolves legal claims that Meta designed its social media platforms to addict children. The company’s existing policy bars children under 13 from using Facebook and Instagram, while allowing teenagers to use the services with some content limits.

Meta has acknowledged that younger users sometimes enter false birth dates. Historically, it has relied on contextual clues, such as birthday posts or celebrations of school grades, rather than asking for identity documents. The settlement requires stronger safeguards for users under 18, including daily usage limits and the disabling of push notifications at night.

For children under 13, Meta must take additional steps, including examining the friend networks of suspected accounts in an effort to identify and remove them. Users will have an easier way to report suspected children’s accounts, and an independent auditor will be able to review Meta’s efforts. The company may temporarily use some data from children it identifies to train an artificial-intelligence model designed to detect under-13 users in the future.

Stricter age assurance also faces legal complications. Meta has pointed to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a 1998 federal law that can make companies liable for damages if they collect personal data from children under 13 without parental consent. Meta and other social media companies have argued that the law leaves them caught between verifying ages and limiting the data they may collect.