Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

Technical Alternatives to Age Verification

• Several propose a standardized, self-declared content rating system (TXT/SRV/.well-known, W3C tags, or similar), with categories like “social media,” “porn,” “gambling,” plus country-specific minimum ages.
• Parents could then use OS/browser/network parental controls to block or time-limit categories, with default profiles shared by schools or communities.
• Existing systems like RTA for adult content are cited as partial precedents, but criticized as too coarse, Christian-influenced, or inconsistently adopted.
• Others suggest browsers and app stores could coerce adoption (e.g., blocking or degrading unrated sites, similar to how HTTPS was enforced).

Motives, Privacy, and Surveillance

• Many see “protect the children” as a pretext for de-anonymizing the internet and building a single identity system, especially when tied to bank IDs or government IDs.
• Others argue there are both sincere child-protection advocates and actors who exploit that concern to push mass surveillance.
• Strong concern that age checks will normalize ID for all online activity, harming privacy of both adults and minors, and creating new data honeypots.

Parental Responsibility and Collective Action

• Sharp divide over whether parents “already have the power” via discipline, dumbphones, and parental controls, versus claims that kids routinely bypass controls and that schools and peer norms make abstention costly.
• Several describe kids becoming social outcasts or missing essential group chats if they lack phones or social media.
• Some suggest collective pacts among parents or nationwide bans on underage social media as ways to solve the coordination problem.

Effectiveness, Bypass, and Risks

• Many argue motivated teens will evade age checks (VPNs, Tor, black markets for verified accounts), so harms to privacy will not yield real protection.
• Concerns that pushing users off regulated sites (e.g., mainstream porn platforms) may drive them toward darker, less accountable spaces.
• Others counter that mainstream platforms are already problematic and should be held to stricter standards, including robust age gates.

Alternative Regulatory Targets

• Ideas include banning or restricting advertising to minors, limiting data-driven targeting, regulating addictive design features, or enforcing content- and interaction-based safeguards (e.g., age-segmented communities) instead of identity-based access.