Facebook age limit for children, explained

The minimum age for a Facebook account is 13. That’s the rule in the UK and most countries. So if your child is under 13, they’re below Facebook’s own minimum, full stop.

Two things are worth understanding beyond that headline. The 13 limit is self-declared, so the number on paper isn’t the same as a check at the door. And for the children who are old enough, Meta has changed the default settings quite a bit. Here’s the calm version.

What is the minimum age for Facebook?

Thirteen. It’s stated in Facebook’s terms, and it isn’t a number Meta picked at random. It ties to data-protection law. In the UK, 13 is the age at which a child can consent to their own data being processed by an online service, under UK GDPR. In the United States, where Facebook started, the same 13 line comes from COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

That’s why 13 is so consistent across the big platforms. It’s less about a judgement on maturity and more about the age children can legally agree to having their data handled. Facebook isn’t an outlier here. If you want the figures for Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp and YouTube in one place, our round-up of social media age limits in the UK covers them side by side.

Is the age limit actually checked?

This is the part most parents miss. The 13 limit is self-declared at sign-up.

When someone creates an account, Facebook asks for a date of birth. By default it does not verify that date. So a child who wants an account can simply enter a year that makes them old enough, and they’re through. There’s no birth certificate, no parental sign-off as standard.

That single gap is the reason a lot of under-13s end up on Facebook despite the rule. It’s not that the limit doesn’t exist. It’s that the limit leans on honesty rather than a check. Useful to know before you assume the platform is doing the gatekeeping for you.

What are Facebook Teen Accounts?

For the children who are old enough, Meta has tightened things up. Teen Accounts are a set of more protective default settings for under-18s, and they’re mandatory for teen users rather than optional.

They started on Facebook and Messenger in the US, Canada, UK and Australia in April 2025, then went global from 25 September 2025. You can read Meta’s own announcement in the Meta Newsroom post on Teen Accounts.

The defaults a Teen Account turns on include:

• Posts, stories and friends list set to Friends only, so a teen’s activity isn’t public.
• A notification nudging the teen to leave Facebook after 60 minutes a day.
• A sleep mode that mutes notifications between 22:00 and 07:00.

There’s also a layer for the youngest teens. Children aged 13 to 15 need a parent’s permission to change the built-in safety settings to be less strict. So a 14-year-old can’t quietly loosen their own protections without you. Meta’s Family Center page on Teen Accounts walks through how the controls work.

This doesn’t make Facebook a children’s product. It does mean that, for a teenager who’s on it, the starting position is more cautious than it used to be.

What about children under 13?

If your child is under 13, a full Facebook account isn’t the right fit, and entering a false date of birth to get one means signing up to an account that doesn’t carry the under-18 protections at all.

Meta’s own answer for younger children is Messenger Kids. It’s a separate app for messaging and video calls. It doesn’t require a Facebook account, and it’s controlled from a parent’s account, so you decide who your child can talk to. It’s a narrower thing than Facebook by design: messaging and calls, not a public feed.

Whether you want even that is a fair question, and it depends on the child and the reason. Plenty of families decide a basic phone that makes calls and sends texts covers the “I need to reach my friends” need without an app at all. That’s the line our evidence round-up keeps coming back to.

What should a parent actually do?

A few practical steps, none of them dramatic.

First, know the real position. Your child being under 13 doesn’t stop them creating an account, because the age check is self-declared. If they already have Facebook, it’s worth a quiet look at whether the account reflects their true age, since that’s what decides whether the Teen Account protections apply.

Second, if they’re a teen who’s old enough and the account is staying, check it’s a Teen Account and that the date of birth on it is correct. The defaults do useful work, but only if the account knows it belongs to a teenager.

Third, have the conversation rather than relying on the settings alone. A short, honest chat about why the limits exist tends to hold better than a control your child sees as a puzzle to solve. Our switching kit has a calm script for exactly this, including the “but everyone else has it” line.

And if you’re at the first-phone stage and haven’t committed to a smartphone yet, the simplest way to avoid the whole question is a phone that can’t run Facebook in the first place. No app store, no feed, nothing to police. For a lot of families that’s the easiest answer of all, at least to begin with.

The short version to take away: Facebook’s minimum age is 13, the check at sign-up is largely self-declared, Teen Accounts give older children more protective defaults by default, and Messenger Kids is the under-13 alternative. Knowing those four things puts you ahead of the rule on paper.