Utah recently passed two that would drastically change the way teens in the state can use social media. The new laws will impose strict rules on how companies handle teen accounts, including provisions requiring parental consent and mandates for in-app parental controls and curfew features.
But among the most controversial aspects of the law is age verification. It requires companies like Snap, Meta, and TikTok to confirm the ages of their youngest users to enforce the other age-based restrictions. Low , which will take effect next March, the big platforms will no longer be able to simply allow teens to enter their own birthday when signing up. Instead, they would have to go through some other process, such as providing a copy of an ID, before they could access their accounts.
While Utah is the first state to enact such a law, it is unlikely to be the last. Arkansas, Ohio, Connecticut, and all are considering social media laws with explicit age verification requirements or other age-based restrictions. At the federal level, Senator Josh Hawley has a bill that would ban teens under the age of 16 from using social media entirely and would require social media companies to independently verify the ages of their users. Even the US Surgeon General has suggested that 13 may be “” for teens to use social media.
The proposed laws are part of a larger picture of how social media is impacting its youngest users. For years, lawmakers, armed and incriminating, have made youth safety a central part of their effort to regulate big tech. Along the way, they also proposed laws that would control it, make it harder, and limit more app features.
But the latest generation of laws have focused instead on parental consent and age-based restrictions, rather than addressing structural issues like data privacy. Irene Ly, a policy adviser at Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that advocates for the safety of children online, says the shift is happening in part because lawmakers have been unable to pass comprehensive privacy bills.
“Privacy legislation seems to have a lot more sticking points,” he tells Engadget. “It’s hard to find a compromise on all facets of technology regulation.” But lawmakers have been able to find broader support, at least at the state level, for age-based restrictions and parental consent requirements, particularly in states that have passed other laws that emphasize “giving rights to parents.” .
But experts warn that focusing on age-based restrictions won’t address major safety issues lawmakers say they want to solve. And age verification measures, like those in Utah, pose a significant threat to the privacy of all social media users, not just teens.
Privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say there is no way to enforce age verification requirements without mandating that. all users submit to controls. “It’s not just the privacy of young people that’s at stake, it’s everyone’s,” Jason Kelley, EFF’s associate director of digital strategy, tells Engadget, noting that a previous attempt to require age verification was unsuccessful. shot down by the Supreme Court more than a decade ago. “Confirming that everyone is the age they claim to be is not possible without confirming the age of each person.”
For example, Utah it states that “the social media company will deny access to the account” for any “Utah account holder who does not meet the verification requirements.” That means even adult social media users could be locked out of their accounts if they don’t provide a copy of an ID or submit to other age screening.
Figuring out how to apply these laws only in specific states would also be problematic, according to industry groups. “Although the proposed legislation is intended to apply only to Utah residents, platforms cannot know which users are Utah residents without first verifying their identity,” said Ari Cohn, free speech adviser at TechFreedom, a think tank that received funds from Meta and Google. to . “This legislation would be a national mandate that Utah cannot enforce.”
even find out as verifying the ages of users could be tricky. Many minors do not have a driver’s license or government-issued identification. Instagram, an AI face-scanning tool that claims to be able to accurately estimate the ages of users based on their facial features (experts have about accuracy and implications of using these tools at scale). But EFF’s Kelley says any form of age verification exposes users to additional data privacy risks.
“It’s very easy to find examples of these companies taking advantage of data that they explained was going to be collected for one purpose and using it for another,” says Kelley. For example, it wasn’t that long ago and both admitted to using originally collected phone numbers for two-factor authentication for targeted advertising. Kelley says there could be an even higher risk of something similar happening with any age verification system. “We have no way of knowing if they are doing it with the identity verification information. Whether it’s a selfie, a shared driver’s license, an API call to a credit company, we just don’t know.”
Common Sense Media has similar concerns. Ly says laws that address more fundamental aspects of social media platforms would be more effective than trying to block teens of a certain age.
“If you can implement some key changes to these companies, like limiting how much data they collect and what they use it for, and then making changes to the way their platform is designed, that will create a healthier experience,” he said. saying. “It would not be necessary to ban teenagers from being on the platform entirely.”
