Why social media can’t control age verification
Misinformation on social media runs deeper than just content
Written by @KateMRedd
3.5 minute read
THE QUESTION:
Can you really prevent someone from lying about their age online?
SUMMARY:
For some of us, lying about our age on the Internet is habitual.
It’s been just another click of the mouse since Neopets asked if we were old enough to play Flash games, or we wanted to browse a certain Hub of… well, you get the point. There’s a lot of content on the Internet that, theoretically, is only being seen by those of us born before 2003.
But when people lie about their age, and companies aren’t always incentivized to verify it, you get a system that fails at protecting the people it’s designed to.
Today’s trending platform, TikTok, has banned DMs for users who are under 16 in addition to its pre-existing age requirement of 13 to create an account. TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, already paid 5.7 million dollars to settle with the FTC for violating child privacy laws in 2019. That’s roughly a 3% drop in the bucket for a platform that netted $176.9 million in revenue that year, but the point here is the precedent: TikTok’s had trouble with its youngest users before.
According to Engadget, thanks to the settlement, TikTok automatically rejects anyone under 13 who attempts to make an account, and if they fail an in-app birthdate verification, they’re booted from the platform. But their detection isn’t perfect, and older users are being incorrectly flagged as underage. When the birthdate drop-down box glitched, or the date they used to avoid giving out their real birthdate couldn’t be recovered (despite being of age) their accounts were kicked. But for everyone who made it past the birthdate check, whether by honest means or not, their accounts remained.
Not only does social media let anyone who claims to be of age interact with other users and share content with the world, there’s a bigger problem—it also lets users see the plethora of advertisements and #sponcon floating around the internet. On Twitter, advertisements selling adult content, like alcohol, are only shown to users of age by screening users’ profiles for their birthdates. However, it’s up to the brand to opt-in to this service.
More importantly, it’s up to the user to be honest that they’re old enough to see, and potentially purchase, that product in the first place.
And that’s where the heart of this issue lies.
Social media superpowers like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok all require users to input their date of birth to sign up, rejecting requests from users that don’t meet their age limits. When these services, as well as other popular online offerings like Discord, detect an underage user based on their date choices, they require an official form of government ID to be sent to verify the user’s identity.
Now that is an interesting tactic; IDs back-up age verification where a simple checkbox can’t.
JUUL, the lip-gloss-sized black e-cigarette marketed by Juul Labs as an “alternative to combustible cigarettes for adult smokers” and by high schoolers everywhere as a party accessory, has had to up their age verification strategies on their e-commerce platform after coming under fire for their product’s underage audience. They use a two-factor authentication code, but more importantly, the last four digits of a customer’s social security number, to confirm via publicly available records that customers are over 21. When those verifications fail, they require a photo ID and a current photo.
In terms of social media, Parler tried the same thing for their free-to-use platform: users who wanted to be verified had to provide their social security number.
But here’s the catch.
Requesting a true form of ID works when there’s a purchase that can be withheld. When the service is free, and income for the platform is based on serving ads, there is less of an incentive for platforms to be as hard-nosed about age verification.
So what’s a free online service to do?
There’s nothing left to do but figure it out—and do it fast. In the midst of a global pandemic, social media platforms are doing much of the heavy lifting for human connection. And for all the positives, especially for minors who may be suffering under the weight of online school and canceled plans, issues of abuse and exploitation remain all too common.
THE TAKEAWAY:
If your age can’t be verified by JUUL, you can’t buy a JUUL. The company doesn’t get your money, and you don’t get your e-cig.
But users don’t pay to use Twitter or TikTok, and so the stakes that encourage users to tell the truth are lower, if they even exist at all. And social media’s profit structure is based on its advertisers, who want as many eyeballs on their product as they can get, whether it be boomers, millennials or Gen Zers behind the screen.
The result? Age verification is just the 21st century’s paper tiger.
NEWS PEG:
Tragically, a 10-year-old TikTok user from Italy died earlier this year due to a “blackout challenge” popularized on the site. As a result, all Italian TikTok users are going through a re-verification process for their ages now.
WHAT WE DON’T HAVE ANSWERS TO YET:
While we’re pretty sure that checkboxes and drop-down menus can’t force honesty online, when there isn’t a transaction involved, we’re not entirely sure what can.
Requesting an ID verification to confirm an identity might work, but the process is lengthy. Plus, what if someone doesn’t have one? What if they don’t feel confident sharing their drivers’ license or social security number on a platform that isn’t designed to handle sensitive information?
Are social media platforms willing to add more friction to the sign-up process, driving away new users—and new eyeballs for their advertisers—by increasing verification tactics?
Well, if all else fails, we suppose there’s always a questionnaire.
SOURCES WORTH INTERVIEWING:
Dr. Liliana Pasquale from Lero, the Irish Software Research Center. She was the lead researcher on the study “Digital Age of Consent and Age Verification: Can They Protect Children?”
Candace Paul, the Outreach and Engagement Strategist from EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center). She works with organizations to develop process improvement measures for data privacy.
RESEARCH SOURCES:
A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions
How The TikTok Creator Fund Works, According To Users By Kaitlyn Wylde
TikTok's older users are being blocked after it introduced age checks
Parler is not the free speech utopia that Trump allies hope for
We’ll see you on the wire.
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