How Offline ID Checks Could Help Solve the Age Verification Head-Scratcher

Legislators around the world are grappling with how to craft effective age verification laws to prevent minors from accessing harmful digital content.

Existing proposals have raised significant concerns relating to privacy, security and efficacy.

But California’s recent legislation offers a new path that — with one key adaptation — could better balance these critical priorities. It contemplates a system in which individuals input their age when setting up new phones, laptops and tablets. Each user’s age is transmitted to the websites and apps they access on that device, enabling these platforms to restrict content accordingly without conducting age verification themselves. However, since users’ ages are self-reported, minors are only one fibbed date-of-birth away from access to adult content.

The solution may be simpler than anyone expected: old-fashioned, in-person ID checks at the point of device purchase. These offline verifications augment California’s privacy-preserving approach by imposing a much stronger barrier for minors while avoiding the trails of sensitive, exploitable data generated when platforms are required to conduct age verification.