EU says Meta fails to keep children under 13 off Facebook and Instagram

The European Commission has issued a preliminary decision finding that Meta is breaching the Digital Services Act by failing to prevent children under 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram. The Commission announced the ruling on Wednesday after an almost two-year investigation. It said Meta does not have adequate measures in place to stop under-13s from accessing its services, or to identify and remove those already on its platforms. Minors can simply enter a false birth date when signing up, the Commission noted, with no effective controls to verify their real age. "Meta's own general conditions indicate their services are not intended for minors under 13," EU tech policy leader Henna Virkkunen said in a statement. "Yet, our preliminary findings show that Instagram and Facebook are doing very little to prevent children below this age from accessing their services." The available Facebook and Instagram tools for reporting minors under 13 are also "difficult to use and not effective," according to the Commission, which found that even when an underage user is reported, there is often no follow-up to actually remove the child from the platform. The announcement describes Meta's own risk assessment for protecting minors as "incomplete and arbitrary," contradicting evidence from across the European Union that suggests 10 to 12 percent of children under 13 are accessing Facebook and Instagram. Meta also seems to have disregarded scientific evidence indicating that younger children are more vulnerable to potential harms, the Commission said. Meta now has the opportunity to remedy the breaches. If it fails to do so and is hit with a non-compliance ruling, it risks fines of up to six percent of its global annual turnover. That could be as high as $12 billion, given Meta's reported revenue of $201 billion for 2025. In a statement, Meta said it is clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older and that it has measures in place to detect and remove accounts from anyone under that age. It said it continues to invest in technologies to find and remove underage users and will share more next week about additional measures rolling out soon.