Tech platforms struggle to verify their users’ age

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Social media and streaming platforms are trying to figure out the best ways to verify a user’s age as parents and lawmakers grow increasingly concerned about the way children and teenagers use online services.
Those worries — along with recently enacted laws in the United Kingdom and California — have pushed companies to try new processes for ensuring underage users aren’t getting onto sites and services meant for older people.
Age verification and age estimation is just one part of an attempt to make tech safer for kids as complaints grow over mental health harms, privacy trespasses and more.
Proposed laws in individual states take some radical approaches to checking age. In Utah, a law that would restrict children and teens from using social media without their parents’ consent — and could also bar adults who don’t verify their age — is headed to the governor’s desk, Axios Salt Lake City’s Kim Bojórquez reports.
Platforms are deploying age verification techniques in the absence of uniform laws or broadly accepted guidelines for how to do so without violating privacy or leaving giant loopholes.
Efforts to better assess users’ ages may run afoul of increasing qualms over adoption of facial recognition technology and tracking of users’ identities and personal data.