SALT LAKE CITY — Can technology really tell someone’s age online? According to a Meta spokesperson: AI-powered tools can help identify underage accounts and guide teens into age-appropriate experiences.
Social media platforms have age restrictions, but verifying a user’s real age has always been a challenge. Most platforms require users to be at least 13 years old, but their systems rely heavily on users entering their date of birth.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to solve, and what we’re talking about now are some advances that have taken advantage of advances in artificial intelligence and technology to enhance these efforts and really help us enforce age limits beyond age limits,” said Jennifer Hanley, Meta’s director of safety.
Mehta said the new AI-powered age verification tool will help identify accounts that may belong to underage users.
“By leveraging AI, we can now find and remove accounts that may be owned by people under the age of 13,” Hanley said. “Until now, we could look at text and information. Someone might be admitting that they’re 12 years old. Now we can look at different signals. So someone might be posting about their birthday or their grade. We can also look at different surfaces that we have.”
These signals may include activity across your profile, posts, comments, and videos.
“We’re also starting to use visual analytics as visual cues that might be related to someone’s height or facial structure. Others indicate that the person is a child, so we can also deactivate and remove them,” Hanley said.
Mehta also said the technology is designed to keep teens from getting caught up in adult experiences. Teens who pretend to be adults may not be registered with a teen account.
“In some situations, teens may be pretending that they are adults. But they are teens, and the experiences of our teen accounts should never be considered,” Hanley said.
These teen account settings have built-in protections for young users.
“Those include privacy protections, messaging limits, who can message teens. We also have time limits. We even have new content experiences that are actually intended to be age-appropriate content for teens,” Hanley said.
When an account is flagged, users may be asked to verify their age.
“If we detect that someone may be lying about their age, we put them in their teen account settings and give them an opportunity to prove their age,” Hanley said. “They can use ID to do age verification, or we have a partner called Yoti who can also help with facial age estimation.”
Mehta said age verification cannot be solved by one company alone.
“This is an ecosystem-wide issue. Everyone is trying to figure out how to best understand the age of people using their platforms,” Hanley said.
The company believes a centralized system could help standardize age guarantees.
“We believe the government can play a very important role by passing legislation that requires age verification and parental approval at the App Store level. ” Hanley said.
Educational resources are available for parents and educators seeking more information, Mehta said.
“Meta has a Family Center that has a lot of great information for parents, educators, everyone. We have educational resources and conversation starters. We have information about teens’ accounts and even parent supervision tools.” Hanley said.
Mehta said improving the age guarantee will ensure that teens maintain an experience designed with safety in mind, while also giving parents more confidence in how the platform protects its young users.
“Utah has taken an important step forward in terms of understanding age and was one of the first states to pass an App Store bill. So I think Utah really understands the importance of bringing this framework at pace,” Hanley said.
