Meta is taking its Instagram age-checking technology worldwide, in a move that will place millions more teenagers into the platform's built-in safety protections even when they signed up with an adult birthday. The company announced the global expansion on 9 November, saying the system uses artificial intelligence to spot accounts it suspects belong to teenagers and move them into Teen Accounts.

Teen Accounts automatically limit who can contact a young user, what content they are shown and how much time they can spend on the app. Until now the system had run in a smaller group of markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the European Union and Brazil. Meta began testing it in April 2025 and said it was encouraged by the results.

The change matters because a typed-in birthday has long been the weakest link in online age checks: a teenager who enters an adult date of birth has historically been treated as an adult. Meta's system looks beyond the stated birthday, flagging accounts it believes belong to teenagers and placing them in the protected experience anyway. The company is also building stronger technology to catch accounts that may belong to children under 13, who are not allowed on its platforms at all.

Facebook and Threads to follow

Instagram is the first service to get the global expansion. Meta said it is continuing to roll the technology out on Facebook, and that it plans to begin launching similar technology globally on Threads later in 2026. Parents in the United States will also start seeing an in-feed video on Instagram during November explaining the approach, linked to guidance by Larry Magid of the online safety non-profit ConnectSafely.

The expansion builds on Meta's recent agreement with 52 bipartisan attorneys general to strengthen how it identifies teenagers and children under 13. Meta also called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same practices, arguing protections only work if they are consistent.

Apple age signal used in Australia

In Australia, Meta has begun using an additional check: Apple's age-range signal. When a parent sets up a smartphone for a teenager, they can let the app store confirm the user's age and assign an age range, which Apple then passes to the developer each time the teenager downloads an app. Meta said it is using the signal voluntarily, but wants laws that make such checks mandatory.

The company has long argued that age verification should happen at the app store rather than inside every individual app, saying one verified signal from a person's device, shared consistently with all apps, is far more effective and privacy-preserving than asking every platform to verify age individually. Its own AI estimates, it said, can act as a backstop to correct mistakes and feed them back to the app store.

Rules differ around the world

The global rollout lands as governments take different approaches to keeping teenagers safe online. Meta criticised the patchwork of laws, saying many do not explain how companies should determine a user's age, with some requiring invasive checks for everyone and others offering no guidance at all. The questions are sharpest in India, where Teen Accounts arrived in February 2025 and where data-protection rules from May 2027 will require verifiable parental consent before platforms process children's data. Meta has not said how its AI estimates will sit alongside those rules. For now, the practical change is straightforward: on Instagram, an adult birthday will no longer be enough on its own to escape the teen protections.