{
  "id": 4905212,
  "title": "Social media companies are using AI and face scans to spot more kids on their platforms",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/01/social-media-companies-are-using-ai-and-face-scans-to-spot-more-kids",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-01T16:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Fast Company",
    "slug": "fast-company",
    "url": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91599859/instagram-meta-openai-age-checks-verification"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Social media platforms are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology to identify underage users, as outlined in Meta's recent legal settlement. This move is crucial, as determining the age of users is a key aspect of child safety measures on other platforms like Google's YouTube, TikTok, and Roblox.\n\nMeta will spend a year refining its age verification approach, but the challenge is significant. Privacy concerns are a major hurdle, as older users may be asked to prove they are above 18, and even younger users could face age verification. The $18 billion settlement with Meta resolves claims from state attorneys general that the company's design attracted young users' attention and harmed their mental health.\n\nTech companies primarily rely on AI to estimate users' ages, as true verification isn't feasible. Google has experimented with AI-based age estimation for YouTube, while Meta uses contextual clues, such as posts about school events, and analyzes user behavior, likes, comments, and login times to estimate ages. Meta's AI also examines photos for visual cues, like height or bone structure, to approximate a person's age.\n\nUnder the settlement, Meta will strengthen its age-checking technology using both its own tools and third-party ones, subjecting its methods to regular audits. Meta aims to improve false positive rates—the number of minors wrongly identified as over 18. Additionally, if a user is under 13, Meta will check the ages of their friends on the platform.\n\nSome companies, like Roblox, require users to take a video selfie for age estimation. However, concerns remain about the reliability and potential inaccuracies of facial age estimation tools, particularly for certain demographic groups. Critics argue that age verification could lead to a less free and secure internet, where people might be denied access to various content, including news, health information, and anonymity.",
  "summary": "Of the child safety measures agreed to in Meta’s landmark legal settlement , no category contains more detailed requirements than its commitments on age assurance —and for good reason. No matter how well the protections work, they are of little use if Meta can’t tell which users are kids. Determining which accounts belong to children is also the linchpin of child safety measures that other…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}