Meta said Monday it was expanding Instagram’s use of artificial intelligence worldwide to identify teenagers who have listed adult birthdays and move them into accounts with stricter privacy, messaging and content settings. Meta expects the expansion to put millions more users under its Teen Account protections. That is a projection from the company, which did not say how many accounts it has already moved under the global rollout.

The change gives Instagram a way to apply its teen settings even when the birth date supplied by a user would normally prevent those settings from taking effect. It also gives the platform more responsibility for judging who should be subject to the rules. As Reuters reported, Meta announced the expansion as it faces lawsuits alleging that its platforms harm young users. The company’s latest announcement describes how it plans to reach more teenagers, but provides no new measurement of what those settings do for their safety.

How Instagram estimates age

Instagram looks for context beyond the birth date a person enters at signup. TechCrunch reported that Meta’s system can look for clues in posts, captions and comments, including references to school grades and birthday celebrations. The system draws on evidence from the account itself. A stated adult birthday can therefore coexist with enough indications that an account belongs to a teenager for Instagram to switch it to more restrictive settings.

The global expansion follows earlier work in individual markets. In 2025, Meta began testing in the United States whether it could find suspected teenage users who had provided adult birthdays and apply the protections automatically. The task in Monday’s expansion is to classify users likely to be 13 to 17 and adjust their accounts. As The Verge reported, Meta uses a separate process to find and remove accounts it believes belong to children younger than 13.

What changes for a flagged account

Instagram’s Teen Accounts are private by default, restrict messages from people the user does not already follow or have a connection with, and limit exposure to some content. Those defaults change what happens even if a teenager or parent never opens the app’s settings. In its earlier description of the program, Meta said users younger than 16 need a parent or guardian’s approval to loosen protections. For a teenager, the most visible changes can involve who can see posts or start a conversation.

Meta said U.S. parents would begin seeing a video in their Instagram feeds this month explaining how the company assigns the settings and how parents can help make sure a teenager’s age is recorded correctly. Reuters also reported on the planned notices. The video is part of Meta’s communication with parents; the company says it can apply the protections automatically when its system flags an account.

In Australia, a second source of age information

Meta said it has started using age ranges shared by Apple in Australia as an additional way to assess users. The two signals come from different places: Instagram makes an estimate from the account, while Apple can provide an age bracket through its device ecosystem. Apple’s guidance says developers can request a bracket suited to the rule they are trying to enforce, such as whether the user is under 16.

That threshold matters in Australia. The country’s eSafety Commissioner says Instagram is among the services subject to the requirement to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians younger than 16 from holding accounts. The regulator says Instagram’s Teen Account settings in Australia therefore apply to 16- and 17-year-olds. That is a different decision from the one Meta announced globally: in Australia, age information can matter both for whether someone can hold an account and for which settings apply to someone eligible to have one.

A bracket gives a developer the answer to a threshold question without giving it the user’s exact birthday. It also leaves gaps if the signal is unavailable. In its announcement, Meta said the signal’s collection and sharing by app stores, and its use by app developers, remain optional. Meta is pressing for app stores to verify age more broadly, while describing its own estimates as another way to catch errors.

What the rollout has yet to show

In its account of the earlier U.S. test, Meta acknowledged that its age estimates could be wrong and said users would have an option to change their settings if placed in them by mistake. A mistaken classification can go in either direction. An adult could have their account restricted, while a teenager the system misses could keep adult settings. Meta’s Monday announcement does not give error rates for either group or detail how often an account’s classification was reversed.

The number of accounts that move into Teen Account settings will show how widely Instagram applies them. Whether that change reduces unwanted messages or exposure to restricted content is a separate question. Those measures would help distinguish the reach of Meta’s rollout from the safety effects the protections are meant to produce. They would also help show whether Meta can extend the same approach across markets without increasing the number of people placed in the wrong settings.