Facebook parent company Meta conceded to stricter age verification practices in its recent $17 billion lawsuit; implementing the technology could transform how all users experience their social platforms.
The suit, brought by 48 states and several U.S. territories, accused Meta of harming children because of the addictive design of their social platforms (ex. Instagram, Facebook).
Compared to total social media bans for teens adopted by some states and countries, Meta has instead promised to craft two vastly different social media experiences. Teen accounts will have time limits, less personalization, less filters and comparison metrics, and less push notifications.
Adults get unfettered access to the best and worst of social media platforms.
The trick to this dual reality– how do you keep the kids on the kid side? ‘Age assurance’ methods require ALL users to identify their age, so Meta can filter the teens from the adults.
Technical realities, legal history, and philosophical quandaries all complicate Meta’s ability to deliver on their promise.
The Status Quo
Most social media companies ask for a user’s age when they open an account, but few take any extra steps to check the accuracy of what someone self reports.
For example, internal data from TikTok in 2022 showed that 70% of its 13-15 year old users claimed to be older so they could avoid teen account restrictions.
“The practical question is how do you verify someone’s age in a way that a teenager can’t simply get around or circumvent?” said Dr. Melissa Villodas, an assistant professor of social work at George Mason University.
Within the world of age verification, there are two common techniques at this time, each with their strengths and drawbacks: ID verification and facial age estimation technology.
The Tech
Requiring ALL users to scan/upload a picture of an ID– most likely a government issued one– has a high guarantee of accurately confirming their age. It also raises concerns around access.
One University of Maryland survey estimates 2.6 million Americans don’t have a government issued photo ID.
“If they can’t produce the required ID, do they then just not have an experience on social media? Are they excluded from the conversation?” Villodas asked.
Private services do not come with a guarantee of their services to all citizens.
Still, a more frontier technology could avoid users needing external resources for social media access.
“There’s been a lot of research, a lot of work, to take a picture of my face and estimate my age based upon it,” said Gus Hurwitz, a law lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in technology and economic cases. “It’s moderately reliable in some circumstances. They also can be gamed.”
Hurwitz says the technology can have inaccuracies when estimating different races or genders. Anyone (teens included) can also find ways to make themselves appear older. How often the technology is required could reduce manipulations.
“A real-time or periodic update, as opposed to a ‘I just need to upload a photo once and I’m in’ process… that’s really important,” Hurwitz said.
There are also ways for technology companies to work together to verify age.
“In technology, we talk about the stack. You’ve got the application, that runs on an operating system, that runs on a computer, that is owned by a person,” Hurwitz said.
Several state laws target other tech areas for age related restrictions.
California law requires operating systems (eg. Windows, Google’s Chrome) to collect age data and share it with apps (like Meta) that need age verification.
In Texas, a new law prohibits anyone under 18 from downloading an app without parental consent. The law is in court, but a judge did allow for it to be enforced during litigation. This has required Apple and Google app stores to create age verification methods.
Hurwitz described Google’s verification as different tiers of accuracy: self report, parental approval, family accounts, and scans of government ID.
Meta’s settlement specifically permits the social media company to use multiple methods and technologies for age assurance, so long as the results meet strict standards of accuracy.
Lastly, the age of a social media account itself could count as evidence for a user.
“I think that my Gmail account is old enough to vote now,” Hurwitz joked.
The privacy expert would argue, Google and other technology companies already have gobs of personal data on their users.
Privacy
Most of these age verification methods require individuals handing over personal data to technology companies- a relinquishing of privacy that cause some to take pause even if they support stricter protections for children online.
In a Pew Research Poll from July, 78% of U.S. adults supported requiring age verification to use social media.
A 2023 poll from the Utah State University found that 2 of 3 Americans were not comfortable sharing their government identification with social media companies. The same responses applied to biometric data.
Privacy concerns have led to social media law reversals; In August, France’s highest court struck down a 15-under social media ban that mandated age verification, citing infringement on privacy as one place of over reach.
“On one hand we want to protect our children, on the other hand we want to make sure this doesn’t become a privacy invasion on everyone else.”said Haiyan Jia, a journalism professor at Lehigh University who has studied social media impacts.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure of “persons, houses, papers, and effects”. That protection specifically applies to government entities though.
Hurwitz with Villanova points out that private companies have always collected gobs of private information about their clients.
“Banks have a lot of information about us. Phone companies have always had a lot of information about everyone. So these concerns are not completely new,” Hurwitz said.
Social media companies like Meta already track preferences revealed in a user’s likes or repost history. Information on a user’s location, age, career, family, and other personal data can be inferred from posts or other information shared on an account.
Still, technology created new frontiers for how gaps in someone’s data can be filled almost instantaneously.
“The scale… and in the digitalized world, the way that we can access and use this data- is tangibly different in many ways,” Hurwitz said.
Past research shows Meta has broken privacy laws in sharing user data with other organizations. There remains a legal boundary limiting the government from forcing private companies to give it access to their collected data. Still, a 2026 report from Proton shows a 770% increase– over the past ten years– in legal requests for data from the U.S. government.
Hurwitz observed that people who verbalize concerns about privacy infringement do not always follow through to match their actions with their concerns.
“How much do people actually care? Rightly or wrongly?” Hurwtiz asked. “Now there’s a subset here, which is how much do children really care? And that’s a completely different question.”
The Meta settlement does line out expectations of data security, as well as timelines for how long the company can keep its age verification data. A broader part of the settlement is limits on selling the account preferences of teen users with third party groups.
As social media users weigh their personal tensions with privacy concerns, the technology options for age verification do raise another Constitutionally inspired question.
Age restriction purposes to keep teens out of adult online spaces; but Hurwitz cautions that company methods also need to avoid false positives.
“How do we make sure that I, older than 18, am allowed to do things on the internet that I should be allowed to do?” Hurwitz said.
This wrestle of restricting access for all for the sake of the youth is what has tied past age verification laws up in legal battles.
The Legal Landscape
For years, age verification was earmarked as a First Amendment issue.
In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. Part of the law required public institutions, like libraries, to use age verification to restrict a child’s access to sites with obscene content. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Reno v ACLU that the internet was largely used by adults, and ‘child proofing’ would infringe on their broader first amendment rights.
That remained precedent for 20 years- but recent case law has chipped away at the original condemnation.
Montana passed a law in 2023 that required pornography websites to age verify users. The law was challenged; in Free Speech Coalition Inc. v Paxton a year later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that adults “have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification”.
Sites like Pornhub chose to block access to the geographic area of Montana rather than implement age verification.
Granted, there are still legal challenges over broader social media bans and restrictions (like the case in Texas with app store age verification).
Hurwitz says that Meta agreeing to age verification in a settlement avoids First Amendment legal challenges– it is one private company pledging to a policy instead of a government mandating an industry standard.
In Close
Haiyan Jia, the journalism professor, expressed doubt that Meta would actually follow through on age verification enforcement. Legally, they are obligated. But years of other companies choosing watered down measures reveal the challenge of committing to the policy.
Jia questioned though if the conversations sparked by the settlement encourage people to take a broader look at all of how social media works.
“This model is built upon this attention economy and getting people on the platform, sustaining attention on the platform, keeping them there. Getting them to come back is definitely the goal,” Jia said.
As people weigh privacy and First Amendment questions when their social media account asks for more of their personal information, she calls on users to take stock of what else they are giving to the companies.
“Realizing for example, how this is really changing our cognition rate, our attitude, our behavior, our collective awareness, and how we participate in a society,” Jia said.
