European Policymakers Discuss Age Restrictions Online as Google Outlines its View on Age Checking
With more regions considering increased teenage social media bans, and public support for broader bans gaining traction around the world, European policymakers are meeting in Brussels this week to discuss next steps, and what the best way forward might be for age restrictions online.
Google will be in attendance, with the search giant today outlining its view on age checking, and the challenges of verifying user ages in a safe and effective way. Google says that people largely understand the need for stronger protections, but they also don’t want their IDs exposed in a data breach.
According to Google, the invasiveness of age-checking approaches should be relative to the risk. As per Google: “Our research supports a ‘risk-based’ approach where assurance matches risk. That means less intrusive assurance methods in most areas – news, education, or travel – and stronger checks for things like adult content or alcohol sales. The rigour matches the risk.”
A Risk-Based Approach to Age Checking
This approach suggests that users should have to provide ID, but not for everything, just for the more sensitive elements. Various solutions have been proposed, including video selfie verification, machine-learning models, etc. There’s no universally agreed best approach, though again, limiting data exposure is a key consideration, because as noted by Google, invasive ID scanning leads to potential risk.
Google has also added that liability and responsibility rest with every service owner – the developer, the publisher, the app creator – because they know what they are offering. However, this raises the question of whether a universal age-checking system would be more effective in preventing underage access to certain content.
The Case for a Universal Age-Checking System
A universal age-checking system would allow for more universal enforcement and less room for data leaks, due to multiple age-checking approaches in every app. As Meta has noted, verifying a teen’s age on the app store would mean that individual apps would not be required to collect potentially sensitive identifying information.
This approach would alleviate many of the concerns about age checking, by limiting data access. Parents and teens won’t need to provide the hundreds of apps their teens use with sensitive information like government IDs.
Limiting Data Exposure
Limiting the amount of times such data needs to be entered would be a better way to ensure user safety. Evidently, and logically from a business perspective, Google doesn’t agree, though as we’re seeing in Australia, which is close to launching its own teen social media restriction laws, other, platform-specific methods of checking user ages are ultimately going to prove less effective.
Meta has now begun notifying Australian teens that it will soon be implementing more stringent age-checking processes, as required by the new law, which comes into effect on December 10th. However, the law itself states that all social media platforms will have to “take reasonable steps” to restrict teens under the age of 16 from accessing their apps.
The lack of a prescribed, allocated tool that every platform has to implement to adhere to these new requirements raises concerns about the effectiveness of the law. Without a clear guideline, it’s hard to see how local authorities will be able to enact penalties based on this.
