From porn sites to social media, age verification requirements are spreading fast. But the technology doesn't work as advertised, the privacy implications are nightmarish, and the laws creating these mandates are often written by people who don't understand the internet.
Let me explain what age verification actually looks like in practice. Hint: it's not good.
Multiple states have passed laws requiring websites to verify that users are over 18 before allowing access to adult content. Some states are expanding this to social media platforms for users under 13 or 16. The stated goal is protecting children, which is a goal everyone can agree on in principle.
The problem is the implementation.
There are basically three approaches to age verification: uploading ID documents, facial age estimation, and third-party verification services. None of them work well.
ID document uploads require users to submit driver's licenses or passports to websites. This creates an obvious privacy problem: you're handing sensitive identity documents to websites that may or may not have robust security. When one of these sites inevitably gets breached, you're talking about massive identity theft exposure.
Facial age estimation uses AI to guess age based on photos. It's notoriously inaccurate, especially across different ethnicities and age groups. It also requires users to submit biometric data—another privacy nightmare—and it still fails at the margins. Can the system tell the difference between a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old? Not reliably.
Third-party verification services act as intermediaries, supposedly anonymizing the verification process. But someone still has your identity information. And now you're trusting not just the website you want to access, but also the verification service and however many partners they work with. Each additional party in the chain is another potential breach point.
And here's the thing that lawmakers often miss: the internet doesn't have borders. State-level age verification laws create a patchwork of compliance requirements. A website has to implement different verification systems for Texas, Utah, Virginia, and wherever else has passed these laws. The complexity is enormous, and the result is that many sites just block access from entire states rather than deal with compliance.
That doesn't protect kids. It just makes content harder to access legally, pushing users to unregulated sites or VPNs that bypass geographic restrictions.
The privacy implications go beyond just data breaches. Age verification systems create profiles of internet usage tied to identity documents. That means there's a record of what sites you visit, when you visit them, and what content you access. Even if the system is designed to be privacy-preserving in theory, the data architecture creates surveillance infrastructure that can be abused.
Law enforcement could subpoena age verification records. Hackers could steal them. Authoritarian governments could use them to identify and target specific populations. The potential for abuse is enormous.
And we're building this infrastructure to solve a problem that age verification doesn't actually solve. Kids are resourceful. They'll use their parents' IDs. They'll use VPNs. They'll access content from platforms that don't comply or operate outside US jurisdiction. Age verification creates a privacy panopticon without effectively restricting access for determined minors.
So what's the alternative? That's the hard part.
Actual solutions to protecting kids online require addressing platforms' design choices, algorithmic recommendations, and business models that profit from engagement regardless of age-appropriateness. That's complicated and politically difficult because it means regulating tech platforms in ways that might affect their revenue.
Age verification is appealing to lawmakers because it looks like you're doing something without confronting the harder systemic issues. It lets politicians say they protected children without actually changing how social media works or how content is recommended.
There are better approaches. Age-appropriate design codes that require platforms to consider children's safety in product design. Stronger privacy protections for all users, not just children. Algorithmic transparency so parents and researchers can understand what content platforms are promoting.
But those approaches require technical expertise and regulatory nuance. Age verification sounds simple: just check ID before access. The fact that it doesn't actually work well and creates serious privacy risks gets lost in the simplicity of the concept.
The technology exists to verify age. But deploying it at internet scale creates more problems than it solves. And we're building this infrastructure state by state, law by law, without a coherent national strategy or serious consideration of the privacy implications.
The technology is capable. The question is whether it's appropriate. And whether we're willing to accept the surveillance infrastructure it requires.
Right now, we're sleepwalking into that infrastructure because protecting children is a politically unassailable goal. But we should at least have our eyes open about what we're building and what we're trading away.
