Social Platforms Explore Age Verification Options to Comply With Teen Access Regulations

Social Platforms Explore Age Verification Options to Comply With Teen Access Regulations

While many regions are pushing for new age limits on social media access, the key challenge remains that there’s currently no universal technology that enables platforms to verify user ages, nor a process in place that would definitively stop youngsters from accessing social apps.

Over the last year, several European nations, including France, Greece and Denmark, have put their support behind a proposal to restrict social media access to users aged under 15, while Spain has proposed a 16 year-old access restriction.

Australia and New Zealand are also moving to implement their own laws that would restrict social media access to those over the age of 16, while Norway is also developing its own regulations.

Though none of these pushes is technically a huge variation from what’s in place right now, with all of the major social platforms restricted to users aged 14 and up.

Sure, you could argue that those additional two years come at a significant developmental time, so the impacts would still be relevant. But the bigger challenge lies in actually enforcing these regulations, and how social platforms and local authorities can feasibly address such in a uniform way.

Right now, any such restrictions are enforced by penalizing each individual platform, with each company having to implement their own checks to stop young teens from accessing their apps.

Meta has proposed an alternative on this front, which would make the app stores, owned by Apple and Google, responsible for verifying user ages at the download level. That would take the onus off the platforms themselves, and ensure a more uniform enforcement process. Though, of course, Apple and Google are less keen on that plan, and they’re certainly not going to voluntarily make themselves accountable for any fines as a result of regional violations. As such, they’re lobbying against this push wherever they can.

But it does make sense, and it would reduce complexity, and establish a more definitive checking barrier at the point of entry, which should also have more impact, given that most young teens are reliant on their parents to buy them a phone.

But barring that possibility, there are several other age-checking systems in testing, which may help to stop youngsters from breaking the rules.

Meta, for example, is currently trialing third party age-checking, using video analysis from Yoti, in order to estimate each potential users’ age.

Meta has rolled this out in selected regions, across both Facebook and Instagram, but it remains, effectively, in test mode as it continues to assess the option.

That’s the same process that the Australian government is trying out, using video ID to stop teens from getting access, and its more recent trials have suggested that it could be a viable avenue on this front.

“The trial’s project director, Tony Allen, said that there were ‘no significant technological barriers’ to stopping under-16s gaining social media accounts. ‘These solutions are technically feasible, can be integrated flexibly into existing services and can support the safety and rights of children online,’ he said. The trial tested a range of methods and technologies, including facial scans, inferring a user’s age based on their behavior, age verification, as well as parental controls.”

That could enable the Australian government to implement this as the baseline measurement, and ensure that all platforms are being held to the same standards in keeping youngsters off their apps.

Though there is also another potential solution in development, which may have more appeal to tech platforms, given its more futuristic vibe.

As reported by Semafor, Reddit is currently exploring the use of eye-scanning to detect user identity.