Age Verification: The Complicated Effort to Protect Youth Online

In 2023, more than 60 bills were introduced at the state and federal level requiring greater parental consent, age restrictions, or safety-by-design measures. Half as many bills have already been introduced in the first few months of 2024. Most of these laws target youth access to online adult content and sales that are age-gated in real life. Yet some states are going further to apply age verification requirements to social media, responding to growing concerns about children’s experiences online. Many social media platforms and other online operators already implement a wide range of age assurance practices to comply with existing laws and uphold their own terms and conditions. These methods aren’t perfect, but mandating age verification, which often necessitates sharing government-issued identification, can have serious unintended consequences for the constitutional rights, privacy, and security of all users—both youth and adults. This report aims to demystify and clarify key concepts related to online age verification by providing a digestible survey of (1) current terminology and practices; (2) recent state and federal efforts requiring online age verification; (3) legal, technical, and social implementation challenges; (4) social media age-based features; and (5) recommendations for minimizing potential harms of age verification moving forward.