YouTube’s new AI tool will now guess your age
It should help spot underage users based on their activity and account history.
There are a lot of kids who know how to bypass age gates better than most adults know how to change their Wi-Fi passwords, and for that, YouTube is trying a different approach to fish them out.
The platform announced on Tuesday that it will begin using machine learning to estimate the ages of some U.S. users in a trial phase, part of a broader effort to protect younger viewers. This AI model won’t be asking your birthdate; it’ll be studying your behavior instead.
From the types of videos you search for, to what categories you watch most, and how long your account has existed, YouTube’s algorithm will now quietly observe and decide whether you’re likely under 18.
If the system flags you as a minor, it kicks into safety mode. At that point, you won’t be getting personalized ads, access to digital wellbeing tools, and recommendations to prevent binge-watching potentially harmful content.
Louis Eriakha
This measure is not just a YouTube thing; it's part of a larger, industry-wide effort to address the fact that there are children online, often unsupervised. Since supervised accounts for teens launched in 2021, YouTube has slowly added more guardrails, but this AI-powered estimate takes things a step further by not waiting for users to self-declare their age (which they can often fabricate).
Now, while this is great, as with most tech interventions, there’s a lacuna. YouTube admits the system won’t always get it right. If it mistakenly pegs an adult user as underage, the burden falls on the individual to prove their real age, using a credit card or government-issued ID.
That’s a pretty high-friction process, especially when the mistake was made by a machine with no context. And unlike Meta’s similar AI tool rolled out across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, which allows users to simply update their settings, I think YouTube’s fix feels more like a tight checkpoint than a "fix it in settings" moment.
Aside from protecting teens, YouTube is also trying to protect itself from liability. There are various government regulations pushing platforms to do more to shield young people from addictive, harmful, or adult content. AI-based age verification might be YouTube’s way of staying ahead of potential regulation.
Oyinebiladou Omemu
