Australia is testing age-verification software to enforce a ban on social media access for users under 16, scheduled to take effect in December 2025.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok may face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$32.1 million) if they do not take reasonable steps to block younger users.

Around 30 students tested five photo-based tools, revealing that some could be fooled with photos of older individuals, raising concerns about reliability.

The trial’s findings will be presented to the government by the end of next month to guide further decisions.

KJR’s general manager said selfie-based tools were the fastest and most accurate, while methods like credit card checks and hand gestures were less practical or consistent.

This effort follows global trends as governments try to protect minors from online harm, though experts warn teens may still bypass restrictions.

Some teens said they could adjust to the ban, but others expected it to disrupt their communication, and no standard or next trial has been confirmed by the government.

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🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Age verification failures have a 20+ year history in online regulation

Australia’s social media age verification initiative joins a long line of similar regulatory attempts with mixed results dating back decades.

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998 in the US aimed to restrict children’s access to explicit material through age verification but was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court after a decade of legal challenges due to reliability concerns and free speech implications 1.

COPPA, enacted the same year, still requires parental consent for children under 13 to use various online services, yet a 2011 study found widespread circumvention with 55% of 12-year-olds maintaining Facebook accounts despite age restrictions 2.

This pattern of technical workarounds has persisted across generations, with the Australian trial demonstrating that even today’s more sophisticated verification methods face similar evasion risks when participants like 13-year-old Jasmine Elkin quickly identified ways to bypass the systems.

The history suggests technological solutions alone struggle to overcome the combination of determined young users, cooperative parents, and practical implementation challenges that have consistently undermined age verification systems.

2️⃣ Privacy-safety trade-off creates implementation dilemmas

Age verification systems face an inherent tension between effectiveness and privacy protection that complicates their implementation.

The Australian trial found that selfie-based systems were most accurate, yet research shows these methods raise significant privacy concerns, potentially creating databases of biometric data linked to online activities 3.

Similar privacy issues emerged with the UK’s Digital Economy Act 2017, where critics highlighted the risks of linking personal identification to online behavior and the lack of regulation for age verification providers 3.

Recent surveys show this privacy concern extends to users, with both young people and parents expressing worry about the implications of sharing sensitive information for verification despite 72% of youth and 86% of parents believing effective age limits would enhance safety 4.

This tension creates a difficult regulatory balancing act where more reliable verification methods typically require more invasive data collection, forcing difficult choices between robust protection and privacy preservation.

3️⃣ Significant generational divide on social media regulation

The skepticism expressed by Australian teenagers in the trial reflects a broader generational gap in attitudes toward social media regulation.

Pew Research data shows that while 81% of U.S. adults support requiring parental consent for minors to use social media, only 46% of teens favor such requirements—a 35 percentage point difference that reveals fundamentally different perspectives on digital autonomy 5.

This divide extends to age verification specifically, with 71% of adults supporting verification requirements compared to 56% of teens, and widens further regarding time limits, which 69% of adults support versus just 34% of teens 5.

The Australian trial participants’ quick identification of workarounds demonstrates this resistance in action, with students like Charlie Price already planning to collect phone numbers of online contacts before the December implementation deadline.

This generational difference suggests that effective policy needs to address not just technical verification challenges but also the significant gap in how different age groups perceive the value and risks of social media access.

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