Online Age Checks Are Increasing. Some Say That's Bad News

Online age checks are on the rise, asking people for IDs or face scans to prove they are over 18 or 21 or even 13. To proponents, they're a tool to keep children away from adult websites and other material that might be harmful to them. But opponents see a worrisome trend toward a less secure, private, and free internet, where people can be denied access not just to pornography but news, health information, and the ability to speak openly and anonymously, the AP reports. "I think that many of these laws come from a place of good intentions," said Jennifer Huddleston, a senior technology policy fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Certainly we all want to protect young people from harmful content before they're ready to see it."

More than 20 states have passed some kind of age verification law, though many face legal challenges. While no such law exists on the federal level in the US, the Supreme Court recently allowed a Mississippi age check law for social media to stand. In June, the court upheld a Texas law aimed at preventing minors from watching pornography online. The United Kingdom now requires users visiting websites that allow pornography to verify their age. Platforms like Reddit, X, Telegram, and Bluesky have also committed to age checks. France and several other EU countries also are testing a government sponsored verification app. Australia has banned children under 16 from accessing social media.

To critics, age check laws raise "significant privacy and speech concerns ... for all users of the internet," Huddleston said. "The only way to make sure that we are age verifying anyone under the age of 18 is to also age verify everyone over the age 18. And that could have significant impacts on the speech and privacy rights of adults." What's considered harmful to minors can be subjective, and this is where experts believe such laws run afoul of the First Amendment. It means people may be required to verify their ages to access anything, from Netflix to a neighborhood blog. Some changes in the works:

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• Verifying users' ages can prove a burden, especially for smaller platforms. On Friday, Bluesky said it will no longer be available in Mississippi because of its age verification requirements. While the social platform already does age verification in the UK, it said Mississippi's approach "would fundamentally change how users access Bluesky."
• Google recently started testing a new age-verification system for YouTube that relies on AI to differentiate between adults and minors based on their watch histories.
• Instagram is testing a similar AI system to determine if kids are lying about their ages.
• Roblox, which was sued by the Louisiana AG on claims it doesn't do enough to protect children from predators, requires users who want to access certain games rated for those over 17 to submit a photo ID and undergo a face scan.
• Some websites and social media companies, such as Meta, have argued that age verification should be done by app store owners, such as Apple and Google, and not individual platforms.