Meta is expanding Instagram’s AI age-estimation system globally to put accounts it believes belong to 13- to 17-year-olds into Teen Account settings, even when their listed birthday says they are adults. The company announced the expansion on November 9.

The big change

  • The change: Instagram is extending an existing age-estimation approach beyond its earlier regional rollout.
  • Why it matters: The resulting settings affect how an account can be contacted and what content it sees.
  • The question for adults: An age estimate can be wrong, making a workable correction route important.

What changes on an account

Instagram’s Teen Account announcement describes private accounts by default, restrictions on messages from people a teen does not follow or know, and tighter controls on sensitive content. It also describes sleep mode and a reminder after 60 minutes of use. Some less restrictive changes require parental permission for younger teens. A mistaken classification can alter an adult’s interactions.

How an estimate differs from proof

A 2025 OECD review of age assurance describes Instagram’s adult classifier as using signals such as account creation information and interactions with profiles or content to estimate whether an account belongs to an adult or a teen. Such signals are clues, not a direct check of a person’s birth date. The November announcement does not publish an accuracy rate for the expansion.

Meta says people placed in the wrong settings can change them; its age-assurance resource says people can verify their age to reinstate the correct settings. The precise verification choices may depend on location and the flow offered in the app. Separately, Meta says that an attempt to change a birthday from under 18 to over 18 can require verification using an ID or facial age estimation. That is a documented birthday-change flow, not a promise that every wrongly classified adult sees the same options.

In an earlier Instagram verification announcement, Meta said a video-selfie option shared the image with age-estimation provider Yoti, which returned an estimate, and that both companies deleted the image. That describes the announced option, not every current verification method or retention rule.

Rollout and what remains uncertain

In May, Meta said the Instagram system had already launched in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom and was expanding to the EU and Brazil. The new announcement extends the approach globally. Its announcement does not establish how often adults are incorrectly classified or independently measure whether the protections prevent harm.