Social media companies increase efforts to detect underage users via AI age assurance

By the Editorial Team · Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Social media companies like Meta, Google, TikTok, and Roblox are advancing AI-driven age verification technologies to better identify and protect underage users amid rising regulatory pressure and safety concerns. Meta’s $18 billion settlement mandates refined age detection and regular audits to prevent child exploitation on its platforms, signaling a critical step in improving online child safety despite ongoing challenges in balancing privacy and accuracy.

Social media companies are intensifying efforts to identify underage users through artificial intelligence (AI) age assurance technologies, a response to increasing regulatory pressure and public concern over child safety online. Meta Platforms, Google, TikTok, and Roblox have all enhanced their age verification measures as part of broader initiatives to better protect minors on their platforms.

Meta’s recent $18 billion settlement with 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories includes some of the most detailed legal requirements around age assurance. The agreement arose from claims that Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms were deliberately designed to exploit young users, negatively impacting their mental health. As part of the settlement, Meta has one year to refine its approach to identifying users under 18, a crucial step since child safety measures rely on correctly detecting accounts held by minors.

Unlike offline age verification—where individuals present government-issued identification to prove their age—online verification poses privacy challenges. Many users are reluctant to provide sensitive documents such as driver’s licenses or passports to technology firms. Meta currently accepts such IDs but commits to deleting them within 30 days. However, the company and others increasingly rely on AI to estimate users' ages without directly verifying birth dates.

Meta’s AI system analyzes various “contextual clues,” including posts related to birthdays or school, user interactions, friend networks, and login patterns, such as absence during school hours, to infer approximate ages. Visual cues like height and bone structure are also evaluated from posted photos, though the company emphasizes that the technology estimates general age rather than identifying individuals. By combining these insights, Meta aims to improve its detection of underage accounts and enhance content moderation accordingly.

Similarly, Google employs AI-driven age assurance for its YouTube platform, which assesses watch histories to distinguish between minors and adults. Roblox, which allows children under 13 to create accounts, mandates video selfies for age estimation only when users opt to engage in voice or text chat with others. These videos are reportedly deleted after verification is complete. Identity verification firms such as Yoti and Persona provide similar age-estimation services based on users’ video selfies for multiple platforms, including Meta and Roblox.

The Meta settlement also stipulates regular third-party audits of the company’s age-checking technologies and sets targets for minimizing false positives—instances when minors are incorrectly identified as adults. Additionally, if a user is determined to be under 13 and removed from a platform, Meta must review the ages of the user’s friends to prevent circumvention.

Despite these efforts, experts acknowledge that accurately verifying age online remains a significant technical and privacy challenge, with ongoing debates over balancing child protection and user data security. The evolving measures reflect social media companies’ responsiveness to growing scrutiny while highlighting limitations in current AI-based age verification methods.

This article was reported by synthesizing coverage from multiple independent news outlets to present a balanced, unbiased account. Read about our editorial standards. Spotted an error? Let us know.