As a new year begins, some things never change. Flawed social media policy seems to be one of them. Early Monday morning, the Virginia House tabled legislation designed to prevent minors from being exposed to addictive algorithms often used by social media websites. All eyes are now on the Virginia Senate, which unanimously passed similar legislation last year. Limiting access to addictive algorithms sounds nice in theory but all current methods of verifying the age of users online come with tradeoffs.
Researchers and policymakers have been trying to balance these tradeoffs, but to date, none of the methods have managed to address all of these concerns at once. For example, one report by the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty in France (CNIL) examined the different methods of age verification and found that none of the currently available methods are able to satisfactorily adhere to accuracy, protect privacy, and avoid discrimination. As the level of accuracy rises, privacy protection often falls in turn.
Methods that rely on users volunteering their age or date of birth are easily bypassed because it is easy to claim to be old enough. ID requirements force users to hand over sensitive information to websites—exposing them to hackers and needless risk—and relying on biometric information requires companies to collect identifiable information. Even verifying by credit card would unintentionally disadvantage low-income Americans.
Data that is collected and stored for the purposes of age verification is inevitably at risk of being stolen or exposed. Data breaches are fairly common and a billion records were stolen in the last year alone, even from major companies that have the resources to protect themselves. For customers and users, this can mean credit card numbers and other information the company or platform collected could fall into the hands of bad actors.
And it’s not just the information of minors that would be at risk. To access these websites, adult Americans would still have to prove their age by forking over data to websites too. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues, any attempt at age verification mandates would be imposed on all users, not just minors. Laws like the one proposed in Virginia would require the collection of sensitive information about anyone who wants to use social media platforms and that means making difficult tradeoff choices between safety and accuracy.
As the saying goes, perfect should not be the enemy of the good, and maybe one day this conflict between privacy and accuracy will be adequately resolved, but the consequences of this kind of legislation are significant. If the goal is to make the internet safer for Virginia children, creating more opportunities for risk seems like an odd way to get there. The Virginia Senate should consider this when it considers this legislation.
Trey Price is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit us at www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal.