Meta may face another big fine in the EU, after the European Commission announced the preliminary findings of its investigation into the company’s efforts to keep young users out of its apps. The commission’s findings, released Wednesday, said that Meta’s current age checking and detection systems were inadequate and failed to meet obligations under the Digital Services Act.
The potential penalty in this case could be up to 6% of the company’s total worldwide turnover. Meta will now have an opportunity to respond to the findings and explain its position.
Though it’s also hard to see how Meta will be able to argue that it is meeting its obligations, based on the Commission’s report.
As per the EU Commission: “Despite Meta’s own terms and conditions setting the minimum age to access Instagram and Facebook safely at 13, the measures put in place by the company to enforce these restrictions do not seem to be effective. The measures do not adequately prevent minors under the age of 13 from accessing their services nor promptly identify and remove them, if they already gained access.”
This has always been a key challenge for all social media apps, and remains so, even as some regions look to implement tough new laws to stop teens from accessing social media apps.
Australia, for example, recently implemented new laws and new penalties that ostensibly force social media platforms to keep teens aged under 16 out of their apps. However, a key failing point of that push thus far has been that the majority of teens are still accessing social platforms, even with more stringent testing processes mandated.
As detailed by Australia’s eSafety Commission in its first report into the effectiveness of the teen social media restrictions: “Of the parents who reported their child had an account on each platform prior to 10 December 2025, around 7 in 10 reported that their child still had an account on Facebook (63.6%), Instagram (69.1%), Snapchat (69.4%), and TikTok (69.3%).”
That’s after the Australian government provided these platforms with not only the incentive to improve on this front, in the form of significant financial penalties for failure to do so, but also the means to enact more stringent restrictions, by outlining various systems they could use to implement tougher age checks.
The problem is, digitally native kids are much more tech-savvy than regulators appear to give them credit for, and there are no foolproof age-checking methods currently available.
But even with those limitations in mind, the EU Commission said that Meta’s teen restrictions are woefully inadequate.
In its notes on Meta’s penalty, the EU Commission said that minors below 13 were able to simply enter a false birth date to gain access to Meta’s apps. In addition, the commission said that Meta’s mechanism for reporting minors under 13 on the platform “is difficult to use and not effective.”
The potentially hefty incoming fine would reflect Meta’s perceived failures in addressing this aspect. In addition, the EU Commission also called on Meta to update its process.“At this stage, the Commission considers that Instagram and Facebook must change their risk assessment methodology, in order to evaluate which risks arise on Instagram and Facebook in the European Union, and how they manifest,” the EU Commission said. “Moreover, Instagram and Facebook need to strengthen their measures to prevent, detect and remove minors under the age of 13 from their service.”
The EU Commission has hit Meta with billions of euros in fines in recent years, based on a range of violations of the DSA, including failure to adhere to data usage consent rules, breaches of EU user data, antitrust violations over Facebook Marketplace and antitrust penalties over AI chatbots and messaging apps.
The ongoing fines may be at least part of the reason why Meta has been so keen to align itself with the Trump Administration, and the company may call on the White House’s support in opposing some of these penalties. The Trump team has signaled that it is willing to support U.S. businesses in opposing foreign regulations, though thus far, it hasn’t gone to the next step of implementing trade penalties against the EU for such.
Maybe, this will be another case for Meta to escalate to the White House for potential support.
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