Online child safety is a complex issue. Many recent proposals have tried to require platforms to verify users’ ages in order to see various types of content or access critical services. But without fail, these “age assurance,” “age verification,” or “age estimation” systems hurt user privacy and increase the risks of identity theft. 

No method of age verification is both privacy-protective and entirely accurate. These methods don’t each fit somewhere on a spectrum of “more safe” and “less safe,” or “more accurate” and “less accurate.” Rather, they each fall on a spectrum of “dangerous in one way” to “dangerous in a different way.” 

Solutions often involve offering a variety of age determination options, but this only glosses over the fact that every solution has serious privacy, accuracy, or security problems. This puts the burden on the individual to decide whether they are most concerned with accuracy or privacy, generally, without giving them the tools they need to determine which option is safest for them.