Age verification laws are spreading fast, and the "prove your age to use the internet" approach will make every family less safe, not more.
Governments across the US and around the world want everyone to prove their identity before going online. In places like California, that's moving down to the operating-system level, so you'd have to verify who you are just to use your own computer. It sounds like a reasonable way to protect kids. It isn't.
To check your age online, a company has to collect your ID, verify it, store it, and tie it to what you do. Once that data exists, it lives under whatever the rules happen to be at any given moment, forever. History already showed us how that goes. In 1940 the US Census promised confidentiality; two years later the government canceled that promise, handed over Japanese American families' names and addresses, and sent 120,000 people to internment camps. In 1998, COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) was meant to protect kids online, and instead it gave companies a reason to never build kid-safe products in the first place.
So the real fix isn't more databases. It's skills. Parents who understand how the internet works can lead by example and pass that on to their kids. You can't uncollect data, which is exactly why the only real protection is to not collect it in the first place.
Read the full Declaration of Principles on the protection of children, families, and freedom in the digital age:
https://www.familyitguy.com/declaration-of-principles
CHAPTERS
0:00 The age verification laws coming for everyone
0:39 How online age checks work
1:18 What we want for our kids (the Declaration)
2:09 1940: a privacy promise broken (the Census)
3:38 1998: how COPPA backfired
5:31 What actually changes behavior
6:09 The real fix: skills, not surveillance
6:58 You can't uncollect data
7:16 The one question to always ask
7:37 Your turn
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
1940 Census and Japanese internment:
- Scientific American, confirmed Census disclosure: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/
- National Archives, Japanese-American Incarceration: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation
- The Second War Powers Act (1942), which suspended census confidentiality: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/STATUTE-56/STATUTE-56-Pg176
COPPA:
- FTC, Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA): https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa
- FTC, Google/YouTube $170M COPPA settlement: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-alleged-violations-childrens-privacy-law
What actually reduced youth smoking:
- CDC, adult cigarette smoking data (42% to 11%): https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/php/data-statistics/adult-data-cigarettes/index.html
- Levy et al. (Georgetown), SimSmoke policy analysis: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4801780/
- Farrelly et al., "truth" campaign dose-response: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1449196/
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ABOUT
I'm Ben, the Family IT Guy. I help parents handle the two biggest digital dangers facing their kids: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication (and the ways AI is making both worse).
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#AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #DigitalParenting #KidsOnline #OnlinePrivacy
