2025’s age‑verification wave: protecting kids or fracturing the open internet?

Freedom House’s latest report flags 2025 as the 15th consecutive year of decline in global internet freedom — and one of the biggest contributors was the rapid spread of age verification laws. Dozens of new rules now require sites and app stores to check users’ ages, often by demanding IDs, face scans or third‑party verification.

Proponents argue these measures protect children from harm. But critics warn they introduce serious privacy and security risks, fragment the internet and disproportionately burden smaller platforms that can’t afford verification services. High fines and compliance costs have already driven some services to exit state markets entirely.

Key developments in 2025

• 25 U.S. states passed adult‑content age verification laws in the last two years; the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age checks.
• 16 states enacted social‑media age or parental‑control rules; federal proposals to bar under‑13s from social media gained bipartisan traction.
• Internationally, countries like Australia and Denmark adopted strict youth restrictions; the UK’s Online Safety Act expanded age checks across many sites, with notable unintended blocks.

Practical harms and trade‑offs

Age verification often requires collecting sensitive data. That means either uploading government IDs or using biometric scans — both of which have led to real breaches. For example, Discord disclosed a potential leak of ~70,000 users’ IDs via a vendor and other third‑party providers have previously exposed drivers’ licenses.

Face‑scan systems are also fraught: AI age estimates can be repurposed to infer identities or demographics, and poorly designed systems can store and correlate personal data with browsing habits. Privacy advocates argue these protections for minors could end up exposing everyone.

Winners and losers

• Large platforms with compliance budgets can absorb verification costs, while smaller sites risk leaving regulated markets or shutting down.
• Services such as Dreamwidth and some social platforms pulled out of states where compliance posed existential financial risk.
• VPN providers saw surging demand (ProtonVPN reported huge spikes after the UK law), prompting concerns about potential future VPN restrictions.

Technical and policy questions

Policymakers must balance child safety with privacy, free expression and market access. Effective, privacy‑preserving age‑verification methods are still immature, and blocking VPNs or enforcing intrusive ID checks carries serious civil‑liberties implications.

Alternatives such as stronger moderation, age‑appropriate design, verified parental controls, and targeted interventions may reduce harm without requiring universal identity proofing — but they also demand resources, oversight and robust legal protections.

For more analysis, see coverage from tech news outlets and the Freedom House report: Freedom House — Freedom on the Net 2025 and related reporting: Engadget analysis.

Discussion: Do age verification laws protect children or do they pose unacceptable privacy and access costs? What mix of technical safeguards and policy rules would you trust to keep kids safe online without fragmenting the web?