I’m a father of three, an app developer, and the head of the Developers Alliance. I’m personally and professionally invested in the congressional debate over the best way to prevent kids from accessing inappropriate online content. So my interest was piqued by Aiden Buzzetti’s recent Washington Examiner op-ed championing the App Store Accountability Act.

Laws aimed at protecting minors online are pushing social media companies to verify age more aggressively, and facial age estimation has become one of the most appealing tools for doing that. Platforms must distinguish between children, teenagers, and adults with more certainty, making selfie-based checks and backup ID requests look like practical ways to show compliance.

A federal appellate court recently rejected First Amendment and vagueness challenges to an Ohio parental-consent statute that limits minors’ access to social media platforms “reasonably anticipated to be accessed by children.” The Sixth Circuit’s divided decision in NetChoice v. Yost is an unusual setback for NetChoice, an internet trade association that won a similar battle in June.

The evidence that social media platforms are harming children has been available for years, and Missouri has not waited for Washington to act on it. When the state joined 32 others in suing Meta in 2023, the charge was documented and damning: platforms had knowingly designed their products to get children addicted to harmful content, building features into Instagram and Facebook that purposefully hooked children and teens while publicly insisting the platforms were safe for young users. The state’s own data backed it up, with nearly 35% of Missouri school-age kids reporting feelings of hopelessness.

On July 21st, Parliament gave final approval to the bill introducing a minimum age for accessing social media in France. The legislation establishes the principle of a ban on social media for those under the age of 15. Platforms will now be required to verify the age of their users before they open or maintain an account, using a ‘double anonymity’ verification system. Users will have to prove their age to a trusted third party, which will issue a cryptographic token certifying only that they are of legal age in relation to the set threshold, without disclosing their identity to the platform.

Teenagers’ use of social media and digital services is a popular subject among politicians worldwide, including those in the European Union (EU). While some countries are currently considering bans up to age 16, others are considering more modest approaches with lower thresholds (pictured below). Meanwhile, a digitally advanced Estonia openly rejects the idea of an EU-wide minimum age for social media use, emphasizing the importance of digital literacy among minors, teachers, and parents, as well as stronger enforcement of existing legal frameworks, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Recently, the House of Representatives passed the KIDS Act, an omnibus package of bills that could fundamentally change how all users experience the internet. This approach puts policymakers, not parents, in control of what their children see online. And it threatens speech and privacy rights for adult users, too.

At a liquor store, bar, or casino, getting carded is part of the cost of entry. Now the internet is carding people, too—and the companies doing the carding are cashing in. New laws and platform rules are pushing games, social platforms, AI products, and adult sites to replace birthday boxes (the fields where you enter your DOB) with identity checks. What was once a compliance tool for sellers in age-restricted industries is becoming infrastructure for the internet, and a growth market for the companies supplying it.

Australia banned under-16s from social media in December; the U.K. is now investigating whether TikTok’s age checks even work; and France just finalized its own under-15 ban this week, racing to beat the August recess. Platforms are grappling with how to handle the “age verification trap,” how do you collect information about a user online without infringing on their privacy and being too intrusive. And while these bans are taking place abroad, some states in the country are toying with similar measures, or fully banning users from specific sites if the platforms can’t verify their age accurately.