By Jack Nivison
Publication Date: 2026-05-06 00:40:00
Social media giant Meta will use AI to scan accounts for posts about birthdays and school grades to exclude underage users.
Meta plans to roll out a range of initiatives, including AI-powered text and visual analysis technology to capture “contextual clues” left by young people on their Instagram and Facebook accounts, to comply with Australia’s world-first social media ban on under-16s.
A Meta spokeswoman said its built-in AI is able to “analyze entire profiles for contextual clues, such as birthday parties or mentions of school grades, across posts, comments, bios and captions to determine whether an account likely belongs to an underage person.”
“(The AI scans) photos and videos for visual clues to a person’s age that may be missing from the text, such as height or face size,” the spokeswoman said.
“Meta will be testing this in the US and plans to expand globally to children under 13 in the coming months, with children under 16 in Australia…
