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Governments around the world are Move to limit children’s access to Social media Lawmakers are questioning whether platforms are able to enforce their own minimum age requirements. Tik Tok It recently became the latest tech giant to succumb to regulatory pressure when it announced it would implement a new age detection system across Europe to keep under-13s off the platform.
The system, which follows a year-long pilot in the UK aimed at proactively identifying and removing underage users, relies on a combination of profile data, content analysis, and behavioral signals to assess whether an account belongs to a minor. (TikTok requires users to be at least 13 years old to register.) According to A Statement from the companyits age detection system does not automatically block users. The system flags accounts that it suspects are run by users under 13 and forwards these accounts to human moderators for review. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
The European launch comes amid a global debate about the negative effects of social media on children, and at a time when governments are discussing stricter regulatory approaches based on age. Last year, Australia became the first country to do so Block social media for children under 16Including the use of Instagram, YouTube, Snap and TikTok. The European Parliament is also calling for mandatory age limits, while Denmark and Malaysia are considering a ban on children under 16.
“We are in the middle of an experiment in which American and Chinese tech giants have unlimited access to the attention of our children and young people for hours almost every day without supervision,” Christel Schalmoz, a Danish lawmaker and vice-president of the European Parliament, said in November during the parliamentary session. Reuters“It called for an EU-wide ban on under-16s accessing online platforms, video-sharing sites and AI companions without parental consent and a total ban for under-13s.”
Advocacy groups in Canada are similarly calling for the creation of a dedicated regulatory body to address the online harms affecting youth in the wake of the Internet deluge. Sexual deepfakes On X with his chatbot Your puppy. ChatGPT Recently announced It was rolling out age prediction software to determine if an account likely belonged to someone under 18 so the correct safeguards could be applied. In the United States, 25 states have already enacted some form of age verification legislation.
“In calendar year 2026, U.S. legislatures will likely pass dozens or perhaps hundreds of bills.” New laws “It requires online age verification,” says Eric Goldman, a law professor and associate dean at Santa Clara University. Argue And that any “government-imposed censorship” should automatically be viewed as “constitutionally suspect.”
“Unless something changes dramatically, regulators around the world are building a legal infrastructure that requires age verification for most websites and apps,” Goldman says.
As platforms work to properly address age verification, does TikTok’s strategy of monitoring users rather than banning children altogether seem like a good compromise? This depends on how you feel about digital surveillance.
“This is a fancy way of saying that TikTok will monitor the activities of its users and come to conclusions about them,” Goldman says. Because platform governance is often politically motivated, and because political solutions sometimes expose children to more harm than help, Goldman refers to age verification mandates as “laws of segregation and oppression.”
“Users may not be thrilled about this additional monitoring, and any false positives — such as an adult incorrectly identifying as a child — would have potentially serious consequences for the misidentified user.” Even if this were the right approach for TikTok, Goldman adds, most services don’t have enough data about their users to reliably guess people’s ages, so this approach isn’t scalable across other platforms.