Facebook Dating to Verify Age to Protect Children From Using the App

In an effort to stop children from using Facebook Dating, Facebook will verify users’ age to ensure that only adults are using the service. The dating service, designed for people over the age of 18, will provide two options for users to verify their age:

1. 1. Video selfie
   2. ID upload

To protect users’ privacy, Facebook will deepen its partnership with third-party age verification service Yoti.

Governments are pushing harder and harder for tech companies to protect children on their services. As a result, we are seeing stricter and more intelligent ways companies verify the age of users online.

Facebook has said that they’re using age detection technology to find out if users aren’t as old as they say they are. Facebook hasn’t said precisely how the technology works and what signs it looks for.

In fact, they’re so secretive about it; even the link that points to the page that describes the tech is broken … We also tried to ask Meta if the tech works the other way around and whether it can identify people on dating apps pretending to be younger than they are. Meta wasn’t available for comment.

Facebook: Our Age Verification Tests Show That Our Tools Are Working

Facebook stated,

Our age verification tests show that our tools are working to help keep people within age-appropriate experiences. Since we began testing new age verification tools on Instagram in June, we’ve found that approximately four times as many people were more likely to complete our age verification requirements (when attempting to edit their date of birth from under 18 to over 18), equating to hundreds of thousands of people being placed in experiences appropriate for their age. We also were able to stop 96% of the teens who attempted to edit their birthdays from under 18 to 18 or over on Instagram from doing so.

If the tech determines that you might not be as old as you say you are, you’ll be prompted to verify your age. If you choose to verify your age with an image, you need to upload a video selfie to Facebook.

Then, Facebook takes a still image and sends it to Yoti. The proprietary tech Yoti uses estimates your age based on facial features and shares that information with Facebook before the image is deleted.

This way, Facebook doesn’t need to know your personal information. Unsurprisingly, Facebook says that 81% of people used this option. You can also choose to upload a form of ID to verify your age — this, we suspect is more of an option for people who are gifted with younger-than-real-age looks.