Meta Says Alert About Pages Targeting Kids Was Sent in Error

Okay, quick PSA: Meta says that some Page managers recently received an alert in error asking them to confirm that their Page is not aimed at kids under the age of 13.

Late last week, Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith shared this image of an alert that she had seen on her Facebook Page.

As you can see in the alert notice, Meta was seemingly looking to clarify whether Smith’s Page was aimed at kids.

The message reads:

“We’re asking Pages like yours to confirm by Sep 30 that they aren’t meant for children under 13”

Tapping through on the alert brought up more info about the process:

So the process, seemingly, is designed to get explicit agreement from Pages that their content is not aimed at minors, which would then ensure that Meta would be able to remove any Pages that are aimed at youngsters after this process. Because they’ll have been reminded of the rules, and will have once again directly agreed to such, so it seems like an enforcement process to better protect kids in its apps.

And while there is seemingly some value to that, it’s not quite ready to go just yet.

Meta provided this statement to SMT:

“We are aware of this bug and have fixed it. We are testing notifications to ensure pages are following our Terms of Use, which prohibit people under the age of 13 from using Facebook. In this case, these notifications were sent incorrectly.”

So false alarm, no need to worry, you shouldn’t be seeing these messages anymore in the app. But if you do see this alert, or if you’re still trying to work out if you should be concerned, you don’t need to worry about it just yet.

Though it does seem like Meta may be looking to confirm such in future, which would mean that if you have targeted your content to minors, you may want to rethink your approach.

I mean, it’s already against the rules anyway, but it may serve as a reminder that kids under 13 are not supposed to be on Facebook, and even if they actually are, you can’t be targeting your content to them.