Meta has announced that it will expand its age verification tools on Facebook in Australia.
From today, if Facebook users attempt to edit their date of birth from below 18 to above 18, they will be asked to verify their age by either choosing to upload a video selfie or by submitting an ID.
To help verify a user’s age, Meta is partnering with online age verification specialist firm Yoti. Meta said this new feature is part of its ongoing work to provide an age-appropriate experience and will be rolled out globally. This feature was initially launched on Instagram in 2022.
Meta is also expanding its ‘limits’ feature on Instagram to better safeguard young people from cyberbullying.
‘limits’ will now give teens an easy way to hide interactions, such as comments, DMs and tags from people who aren’t in their ‘close friends’ list without letting others know their content isn’t being shown.
It hopes this will reduce cyberbullying along with and expanded ‘restrict’ feature, which lets teens take action on a specific bully, without having to block them. Now, when you restrict someone, in addition to hiding their comments, any tags or mentions by that person will only be visible to the person who has been restricted.
“Our priority continues to be investing in privacy-preserving tools and features that help support young people online,” Meta’s group industry director Naomi Shepherd said.
“Following the success of the age verification tool on Instagram, we have been working behind the scenes for some time to see this feature expanded on our Facebook app in Australia, ensuring that everyone has age-appropriate experiences on Facebook.
“We also know bullying can be very personal for teens and they may be hesitant to take direct action, like blocking. Even an innocuous word or emoji might mean nothing to one person but be upsetting to another. The ‘limits,’ feature will now give teens more ways to manage their online environments, including bullying, when they’re worried about blocking leading to retaliation in person, like at school. With this expansion, teens can limit interactions to close friends only, and we’ll prompt teens to turn it on if we detect they’re experiencing a wave of bullying.
“We’ll continue to have teams dedicated to building tools and features that give teens safe, age-appropriate, and positive experiences on our apps.”
The premiers of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia are united in a push to lift the minimum age users can create accounts on tech platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, which is currently 13 years.
The federal government is also looking to put effective measures into place. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he wanted “strong action,” but that it needed to be effective and not rushed. Liberal leader Peter Dutton also supports tougher age verification for social media.
The announcement comes amid growing scrutiny about the dangers of social media usage, especially for younger people. Earlier this month, the Australian government announced a $6.5 million commitment to trial an age-verification program that will restrict children’s exposure to inappropriate online content. The announcement came out of a National Cabinet meeting geared towards addressing gender-based violence in Australia.
In February, New York City sued social media companies Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis. The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court, alleged the companies intentionally designed their platforms to purposefully manipulate and addict children and teens to social media applications.
However, some have expressed doubts about the effectiveness of changing the minimum age of users. Advice provided to the Australian government showed that no countries have been able to implement an age verification mandate without issue. As it stands, platforms require users to be 13 to create an account but sign-up systems can often be circumvented.
