TikTok Expands Use of AI Age Detection to Remove Underage Accounts Globally

TikTok is ramping up its efforts to detect and remove accounts belonging to users under 13 years old, as scrutiny intensifies over youth safety on social media. The company has outlined a multi-layered enforcement strategy centered on AI age detection, stricter human review, and account restrictions for younger users. The platform requires new accounts to declare a birth date, and when a user’s stated age falls below the minimum, TikTok suspends the ability to re-register with a different birthdate.

Beyond this, TikTok is piloting AI tools in the U.K. to flag accounts it believes belong to users under 13. The company says these tools have enabled the removal of thousands of additional accounts and plans to expand their use to the EU, working with regulators on deployment. Human moderators are also being trained to escalate accounts suspected of being underage. If doubts remain, TikTok says its policy is to err on the side of removal. The platform also invites external reporting: anyone, even non-users, may flag accounts they believe belong to children.

Under TikTok’s system, accounts of users below 16 face restrictions: they cannot send direct messages, and default screen time limits are applied. These constraints are part of TikTok’s broader age-based safety framework. TikTok reports that its current enforcement removes approximately 6 million underage accounts globally per month.

Despite these efforts, challenges remain. Determining a user’s actual age via AI involves nuance and margin of error, particularly where appearance or language use may not align with the user’s declared age. Some privacy advocates also warn about risks associated with algorithmic age estimation.