How Meta wants to profile 13-year-olds on Insta, Facebook

Meta plans to use artificial intelligence to find and remove profiles of users under 13 years old. Thirteen is the minimum age required to create accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Meta says it will use AI technology to analyze entire profiles for contextual clues such as birthday celebrations and mentions of school grades. The system will look for signals across posts, comments, bios, and captions. Meta also plans to evaluate factors like height and bone structure from photos, which some consider invasive. The move follows preliminary findings from the European Commission that Meta failed to prevent minors under 13 from using Instagram and Facebook in the European Union.

"Meta, the tech company behind Facebook and Instagram, plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) to find and remove the profiles of users under the age of 13 years. Thirteen is the minimum age for a person to create an account on the social media platforms. "We want young people to have safe, positive experiences online," started a press release from Meta in early May when it announced the move."

"As part of that effort, the company said, it was always looking for ways to find accounts held by users who should not be on the platforms yet but who signed up with a false birthdate to make them seem old enough. The company will be "using AI technology to analyze entire profiles for contextual clues such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades to determine if an account likely belongs to someone underage," the press release stated."

""We look for these signals across various formats, like posts, comments, bios, and captions." Meta's plans to use its own AI called "Meta AI" to root out under-13s was released a few days after the European Commission published preliminary findings that Meta had "failed to prevent minors under 13 from using Instagram and Facebook" in the European Union."

"Meta said it would use context clues, like posts about school grades or photos of birthday parties. But its AI will also evaluate factors like height and bone structure of people in photos a practice which some call "invasive". Nina Kolleck, a professor of educational and socialization theory at Potsdam University, who wrote a book about teens on social media, called "Battle in the minds" (so far only available in German), told DW that Meta would have to create "extensive [age-based] data profiles" before i"

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