Meta Settlement Would Require Age-Verification Across Platforms, EFF Warns of Privacy Tradeoffs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said a newly filed Meta settlement with state attorneys general would require age-assurance checks across the company’s social media products in participating jurisdictions, expanding the collection of personal information even as it imposes new teen-safety rules.

In a statement published Tuesday, the digital rights group said the agreement would push Meta users toward systems that can verify whether someone is a teenager or a child under 13, raising broader privacy concerns for everyone who uses the platforms. EFF argued the changes mean “young users will now have less access to Meta products” and “will compromise users’ privacy and anonymity.”

The settlement agreement and a joint status report were filed Aug. 26 in federal court. The filing names the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, led by Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, as plaintiff, and Meta Platforms Inc. and Instagram LLC, among related affiliates, as defendants. The agreement is intended to resolve attorney general claims in the multidistrict litigation, or MDL, known as In re Social Media Adolescent/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation and related state actions. Meta said publicly that the deal involves 52 attorneys general across states, territories and the District of Columbia.

At the center of EFF’s criticism is the settlement’s age-assurance requirement. The agreement says: “The Age Assurance Framework must include Age Assurance Methods to evaluate whether a Meta SMP user is a Teen User or U13.” In practical terms, that means Meta must deploy systems across its social media products in the settling states to determine whether users are teens or younger than 13, the age threshold that matters under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which governs online collection of children’s personal information.

The settlement explicitly contemplates commercially available methods including ID verification and facial age-estimation technology. It also allows Meta to use its own proprietary methods, subject to testing and certification requirements. For users incorrectly flagged as minors, the agreement requires an appeals process. It also imposes default teen protections on accounts that have not yet been age-assessed.

The agreement includes limits on how age-assurance and under-13 data can be handled. It says that data must be kept only for the minimum period needed to determine age status, then deleted, and it requires encryption in transit and at rest. The settlement also says some under-13 data may be retained for developing, training and testing Meta’s under-13 detection model.

It bars some uses of that information. “U13 Data cannot be used for purposes such as ads targeting and delivery, marketing, or algorithmic optimization efforts,” the agreement says. But the settlement does not create an absolute shield against legal demands for data. Like many such agreements, it allows disclosure when legally required, a point that figures prominently in EFF’s warning about the privacy tradeoffs built into age assurance.

That tension — between child-safety measures and broader data collection — is the core of EFF’s objection. The organization’s statement did not dispute that the deal adds product restrictions aimed at teens. Instead, it focused on the information Meta may need to gather or infer to sort users by age, and on the risks that come with storing even limited age-related data in a system that can still be subject to lawful disclosure.

Meta has framed the agreement differently. In a corporate blog post, the company described it as a teen-safety package that includes time limits, night mode, prompts, parental controls and age assurance. Meta and state officials have also publicly described the settlement as a deal worth roughly $17 billion over time, and Meta said it expects to record about a $10 billion legal expense in the third quarter of 2026 related to the agreement.

The case stems from litigation pending since 2022 over alleged harms to adolescents from social media product design. Under the settlement text, the agreement takes effect on the first business day after the MDL court enters the consent judgment, and it runs for 10 years from that date.