Meta Charged With Failing to Keep Children Off Instagram and Facebook in Europe

Meta has failed to implement needed safeguards to keep children under the age of 13 off Instagram and Facebook in violation of a European Union online safety law, officials said on Wednesday.

Meta does not have an adequate system to identify and remove the accounts of the children who flout the social media giant’s age limits, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, said in a preliminary ruling. Without changes, Meta could face fines and other penalties.

European regulators are aggressively cracking down on social media companies over child safety. Snap and TikTok have also been targeted by regulators in Brussels, while governments in Spain, France and Denmark are among those considering new rules to prevent young people from using social media at all.

Regulators said Meta appears to be violating the Digital Services Act, a law passed in 2022 to force social media companies to police their platforms more aggressively. The company was found to lack have effective controls to check the accuracy of a person’s self-declared date of birth when setting up an account, making it easy to sidestep rules meant to keep children under 13 off the social media sites.

Regulators said Meta’s tool for reporting minors is “difficult to use and not effective,” with up to seven steps required just to access the necessary form. After a minor is reported for being under 13, the company often does not follow up and the user can keep using the service without any kind of review, regulators said.

Across the European Union, evidence suggests roughly 10 to 12 percent of children under 13 are accessing Instagram and Facebook, according to regulators.

“Instagram and Facebook are doing very little to prevent children below this age from accessing their services,” Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a statement. “Terms and conditions should not be mere written statements, but rather the basis for concrete action to protect users — including children.”

The European Union, as well as several individual countries in the 27-nation bloc, are exploring new online age-verification tools to keep young people from accessing certain content.

Meta said it disagreed with the commission’s findings, calling age-verification an “industry-wide challenge.”

“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,” the company said in a statement. “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.”

Europe has for more than a decade been the world’s strictest regulator of the tech industry over issues of privacy, anticompetitive business practices and illicit online content. Authorities have pressed ahead with investigations of American companies even as the Trump administration has threatened retaliation.

The European Union is also investigating Meta on other issues, including whether Facebook and Instagram have an addictive design, as well as a case looking into its recommender systems.

In the United States, Meta and other social media companies are also facing growing scrutiny over child safety. In March, Meta and YouTube were found guilty by a California jury of harming the mental health of a young user through addictive designs and other features.

The European investigation into Meta’s age-verification tools started in 2024. After the preliminary charges were brought on Wednesday, the company has an opportunity to provide regulators with a response. A final decision on potential penalties can take over a year.

The commission can issue a fine of up to 6 percent of Meta’s worldwide revenue, though such a large penalty would be extremely rare. The two sides can also reach a settlement to resolve the case.

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from The Hague, the Netherlands.