The European Commission has preliminarily found Meta to be in breach of the Digital Services Act for not preventing minors under the age of 13 from using its platforms
Meta has been found by the European Commission to be in breach of European rules to prevent minors under 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram. The preliminary ruling, if confirmed, could attract fines of up to 6pc of worldwide global revenue, which was $201bn (€172bn) in 2025.
The Commission’s ruling came under the Digital Services Act, which requires platforms such as Meta to take special care if minors are using its services. Because Meta designs Facebook and Instagram for non-minors and has now been found to have large numbers of minors using them, it now faces a large sanction.
“Despite Meta’s own terms and conditions setting the minimum age to access Instagram and Facebook safely at 13, the measures put in place by the company to enforce these restrictions do not seem to be effective,” said the Commission today in a statement.
”The measures do not adequately prevent minors under the age of 13 from accessing their services nor promptly identify and remove them, if they already gained access. For example, when creating an account, minors below 13 can enter a false birth date that makes them at least 13 years old, with no effective controls in place to check the correctness of the self-declared date of birth.”
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In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said that the copmany “disagrees” with the Commission’s assessment.
“We disagree with these preliminary findings. We’re clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older and we have measures 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 rolling out soon. 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.”
However, the Commission said that Meta’s mechanism for dealing with suspected underage use in inadequate.
“Meta’s tool for reporting minors under 13 on the platform is difficult to use and not effective, requiring up to seven clicks just to access the reporting form, which is not automatically pre-filled with the user’s information. Even when a minor under 13 is reported for being under the age threshold, there often is no proper follow-up, and the reported minor can simply continue to use the service without any type of check.”
Ireland plans to introduce age verification for social media through a state-verified digital wallet system this year, while several EU countries are poised to introduce social media bans for under-15s and under-16s.
