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The committee announced the ruling on Wednesday after approx The investigation lasted for two yearsSaying that Meta does not have adequate procedures in place to prevent people under the age of 13 from accessing its services, or to identify and remove those already on its social media platforms. A notable example of this is that minors can simply enter a false birth date when signing up on Facebook and Instagram to falsely advertise that they are over 13 years old – the minimum age set out in Meta’s own terms and conditions – with no effective controls in place to verify their true ages.
“Meta’s general terms state that its services are not intended for minors under the age of 13,” EU technology policy officer Hina Virkonen said in a statement. “However, our preliminary findings show that Instagram and Facebook do very little to prevent children under this age from accessing their services.”
Facebook and Instagram’s tools available for reporting minors under 13 are also “difficult to use and ineffective,” according to the commission, after finding that even when a user is underage He is It has been reported, and oftentimes there is no follow-up to actually remove the child from the platform. These concerns put Meta in breach of DSA rules that require it to “carefully identify and mitigate risks” to people under the age of 13 using its platforms.
The EU announcement describes Meta’s risk assessment of protecting minors from age-inappropriate experiences as “incomplete and arbitrary.” The Commission says this contradicts a “large body of evidence from across the EU” that suggests 10 to 12 percent of children under 13 use Facebook and/or Instagram.
“Furthermore, Meta appears to have ignored readily available scientific evidence suggesting this Younger children are more at risk The committee said that “the potential harm caused by services such as Facebook and Instagram” is still continuing to investigate concerns that Facebook and Instagram may cause “behavioral addiction in children”, along with an age verification investigation.
Meta now has the opportunity to address violations, with the Commission calling on Instagram and Facebook to update their risk assessment methodology and implement more robust age verification tools. If Meta fails to do so and is found to be non-compliant, it risks fines of up to six percent of its global annual sales. This could reach $12 billion, given Meta’s reported revenue of $201 billion for 2025.
Meta says it does not agree with the European Union’s preliminary findings in a statement The Guardian:
“We’re clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people ages 13 and older, and we have procedures in place to detect and remove accounts from anyone under that age. We continue to invest in technologies to find and remove underage users and will have more to share next week about additional measures that will be rolling out soon.”