The EU believes that Meta does not do enough to protect children.

According to the EU Meta. Inadequate protection of children

According to the British Financial Times, based on the preliminary results of the EU survey, the European Commission is step by step imposing a fine on Meta for breach of the Digital Services Act. The Commission stated that Instagram and Facebook may have violated DSA because they had not sufficiently prevented minors from using their respective platforms.

The terms and conditions of Meta require users to reach the age of 13 years to access Facebook and Instagram, but an EU survey found that Meta currently has several problems with ways to stop underage users. These include how easy it is to lie about age when an account is set up, and how complex it is to report to Meta the actual user under the age of 13. The European Union also claims that Meta used “an incomplete and arbitrary risk assessment” when considering the danger of minors using Instagram and Facebook.

The Committee stated: “Meta's assessment contradicts a wealth of evidence from across the European Union, which indicates that approximately 10-12 per cent of children under 13 are visiting Instagram and/or Facebook.” Moreover, Meta seems to ignore the available scientific evidence that young children are more vulnerable to potential harm from services such as Facebook and Instagram.”

The European Commission called on Instagram and Facebook to strengthen tools for the detection and removal of minors and to change risk assessment methods. If no change is made, Meta may face a fine equivalent to 6% of its global annual income. However, before all this happens, Meta has access to the documents of the Commission ' s investigation, responded to the preliminary findings and taken steps to correct some of the problems identified in the investigation.

Meta stated in a statement to the British Financial Times: “We are well aware that Instagram and Facebook were designed for people aged 13 and over, and we have taken measures to detect and remove the accounts of any person below that age.” “We will continue to invest in technology to locate and delete underage users and will share more information on other measures to be introduced next week.”

The European Commission launched its first survey of the Meta platform in 2024, with a special focus on child addiction to social media. Its preliminary findings will be available in 2026, when regulators and social platforms will be united around age-validation techniques as a solution to the problem, but the technology has some obvious privacy deficiencies. It may not be surprising that the EU also has its own age-validation applications, which can inform countries and companies seeking to deploy similar protection measures.