Meta is ‘clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older’, said the company.

The EU has preliminarily found that Instagram and Facebook are in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) for failing to “diligently” identify and mitigate risks that children under 13 face when using these platforms.

The findings are in relation to an investigation the EU launched against Meta’s popular social media platforms in mid 2024 over concerns that Instagram and Facebook use algorithms that stimulate “addictive behaviour” in children.

Users need to be at least 13 years old to use Instagram and Facebook. However, the Commission found that the company’s own restrictions against underage usage don’t work.

It said that minors under 13 can enter false birth dates with no effective controls in place to check its validity. The measures Meta has put in also do not promptly identify under-13 users to remove their access, the EU added.

Meanwhile, the tools Meta offers to report underage users is “difficult to use and not effective”, the Commission said in its statement.

Meta also does not follow up on these reports, which allows underage users to continue using the service without any checks, the European authority found.

Moreover, the social media giant’s lack of enforcement “builds on an incomplete and arbitrary risk assessment” the EU said, “which inadequately identifies” the risk underage users face when accessing Instagram and Facebook.

Meta’s assessment contradicts “large bodies of evidence” from all over the EU which finds that roughly 10 to 12pc of children under 13 are accessing Instagram or Facebook, the authority said, while also disregarding “readily available scientific evidence” which indicates younger children are more vulnerable to potential harms caused by these services.

Meanwhile, last October, the EU, in a different preliminary ruling, found that Meta does not provide Instagram and Facebook users with simple mechanisms to notify illegal content or challenge content moderation decisions.

Meta disagrees with today’s findings. In a statement to SiliconRepublic.com, a spokesperson for the company said Meta is “clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older”, adding that they have “measures in place to detect and remove accounts from anyone under that age”.

“Understanding age is an industry-wide challenge, which requires an industry-wide solution, and we will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission on this important issue.

“We continue to invest in technologies to find and remove underage users and will have more to share next week about additional measures rolling out soon,” the spokesperson added.

Today’s (29 April) results are based on an in-depth investigation by the EU that included an analysis of Instagram’s and Facebook’s risk assessment reports, internal data and documents, as well as the platforms’ replies to requests for information, the Commission said in a statement.

These, however, aren’t the Commission’s final views on the matter. If they are confirmed in its ultimate findings, the Commission could fine Meta as much as 6pc of its total worldwide annual turnover. Meta made more than $200bn in revenue in 2025.

“Meta’s own general conditions indicate their services are not intended for minors under 13. Yet, our preliminary findings show that Instagram and Facebook are doing very little to prevent children below this age from accessing their services,” said the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy Henna Virkkunen.

“The DSA requires platforms to enforce their own rules – terms and conditions should not be mere written statements, but rather the basis for concrete action to protect users, including children.”

The Commission wants Instagram and Facebook to change their risk assessment methodology to properly evaluate which risks arise on its platforms in the EU and how they manifest. It also wants Meta’s social media platforms to strengthen their measures to prevent, detect and remove minors under the age of 13 from their service.

According to the DSA guidelines, age estimation, which includes age verification, is seen as the appropriate measure to ensure the safety of minors. In order to be effective, all age-assurance technologies are required to be “accurate, reliable, robust, non-intrusive, and non-discriminatory”, the EU said.

The Commission, meanwhile, is continuing on with its investigations into Meta’s other potential breaches in relation to this investigation, including the assessment and mitigation of risks arising from the design of Facebook’s and Instagram’s online interfaces, which, it said, could be leading to “addictive behaviour”.

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