There is an important global discussion occurring about the best ways to protect young people online. Many governments are proposing various measures, such as limiting personalized content, setting screen time restrictions, and even implementing complete social media bans. Although these proposals aim to achieve a significant and shared objective, they often miss a critical practical issue: how platforms can accurately and safely confirm a user’s age.
For these measures to be effective, apps need to determine the age of their users. However, verifying age online is a complex challenge that the entire industry faces. Many teenagers do not possess conventional government-issued identification, and asking individuals to upload sensitive personal documents to each app they use poses substantial privacy concerns. Additionally, smaller or newer platforms may not have the necessary security measures to protect this data, which can inadvertently risk exposing millions to security breaches.
Unintended consequences of bans
Ensuring the safety of young people online should not compromise their privacy. This is why parents and safety advocates overwhelmingly support a more straightforward and secure solution: centralizing age verification and parental consent within app stores. By verifying age at the device level, young people can enjoy consistent, age-appropriate experiences across the various apps they use while ensuring their personal information remains protected.
There is recognition of the pressure lawmakers face to take action, and the rights of governments to decide what is best for their citizens are respected. Nonetheless, any genuinely effective safety plan must resolve the fundamental issue of accurately and uniformly determining a person's age.
Australia’s ban on social media for those under 16 showcases the intricate logistical challenges involved. The ban, introduced without a privacy-preserving method for age verification, has led to unintended consequences, as predicted by safety experts. Teenagers have been reported to bypass inconsistent age checks, evade restrictions, and migrate to unmonitored apps and gaming sites not covered by the ban. This shift can inadvertently make the internet less safe for young users, who lose access to built-in protections such as Teen Accounts on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.
These concerns are globally shared; a joint statement from over 370 international academics and privacy experts cautioned that broad bans risk privacy and autonomy if age verification doesn’t rest on a secure foundation. If this issue is not correctly addressed, new risks emerge for everyone online. While Meta will continue to adhere to local laws, current legislative proposals fail to tackle these complex age verification issues, which should prompt global lawmakers to reconsider.
The path forward
There is a practical approach to addressing these logistical challenges: centralizing age verification and parental approval at the app store level. App stores serve as the entry point for apps on teens’ devices, and Apple and Google already gather age information when a parent sets up a teen's phone. They also have systems to secure parental approval for purchases. Extending this mechanism to all app downloads would mean verifying age once at the device level, turning the phone into a single, secure checkpoint. This allows parents to conveniently approve or deny downloads across all platforms, eliminating the need for individuals to submit sensitive personal information to multiple apps.
In the past year, more than half of U.S. states have introduced app-store age legislation. Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, and California have enacted various versions, largely driven by parental support. Momentum is also increasing in Washington, where the App Store Accountability Act is progressing through Congress.
Public opinion is clear: polls reveal that 85% of American parents support app stores verifying age and securing parental approval before teens download apps. Similarly, 82% of Australian parents and nearly 75% of parents in eight European countries favor parental approval. Major industry players like Match Group, X, Snap, and Pinterest have also backed this approach.
The core question
We will continue to follow laws worldwide as they evolve, yet the conversation should always return to the fundamental question: how can we, as a society, reliably verify age on the internet? Until this question is answered honestly, other solutions are merely temporary fixes.