Europe corners Meta: it detected that 12% of children under 13 use Facebook and Instagram and threatens million-dollar fines

Investigators from the European Commission understand that the fine print of Meta’s usage rules is a dead letter, and that although its terms and conditions ensure that the minimum age to access Instagram and Facebook is 13 years, “the measures put in place by the company to implement these restrictions do not seem to be effective” because “they neither adequately prevent minors under 13 years of age from accessing their services nor identify them or remove them from their networks when they have already managed to access them.”

It is as easy to deceive the system, says the European Commission, as giving a date of birth for someone who is already 13 years old, because There are no effective controls in place to check that the declared date of birth is indeed real..

The platforms have systems in place for someone to report that they have detected minors under 13 years of age as users, but these systems, the European Commission understands, are so complicated to use that they are not effective.

For example, just to access the report form “it takes up to seven clicks.” Even when someone detects and reports that they have found a child under 13 years old using the platform, and spends a few dozen minutes finishing the report, the platform does not follow up on the report.

Brussels points out that Meta assures that there are no minors under 13 years of age using Instagram or Facebook, when the European Commission has evidence to the contrary throughout Europe and that between 10% and 12% of European minors under 13 years of age regularly access these two social networks.

Furthermore, Brussels criticizes that Meta “seems not to accept the available scientific evidence indicating that children are more vulnerable to harmful behavior caused by services such as Facebook and Instagram.”

Brussels demands changes or will take action. The European Commission believes that Meta must immediately change its methodology to address these risks, even if doing so will potentially lose hundreds of thousands of users in Europe. The Commission also demands that Meta “strengthen its measures to prevent, detect and eliminate minors under 13 years of age from its services.”

The procedure does not end here. The American company now has the possibility of making allegations, but it cannot not immediately implement the measures required by the European Commission.

Brussels now sends the results of its investigation to the European Panel on Digital Services, an independent forum that will analyze them. If it confirms the Commission’s investigation and the company does not take the required measures, the fine could reach 6% of Meta’s global revenue. Furthermore, the Commission could impose a daily fine even earlier until the company complies with the requirements.

The investigation began in May 2024 and includes other potential violations of the Digital Services Act, such as failures to prevent minors (any age under 18) from being exposed to content that could harm their physical and mental well-being.

Henna Virkkunen, Vice President of the European Commission, responsible for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said this morning that “Meta’s own conditions indicate that its services are not suitable for children under 13 years of age, but Instagram and Facebook are doing very little to prevent children under that age from accessing their services.”

The European decision is another clash between the European Commission and the large American platforms that financed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which the White House is trying to protect from European laws, claiming that they are censorship laws and for whose defense Trump has even gone so far as to blackmail European countries by imposing more tariffs on them.