Age Verification Threats Across the Globe: 2025 in Review

"Here are three ways we pushed back [against these bills] in 2025: Social Media Bans for Young People Banning a certain user group changes nothing about a platform's problematic privacy practices, insufficient content moderation, or business models based on the exploitation of people's attention and data. And assuming that young people will always find ways to circumvent age restrictions, the ones that do will be left without any protections or age-appropriate experiences."

"Through this wave of age verification bills, politicians are burdening internet users and forcing them to sacrifice their anonymity, privacy, and security simply to access lawful speech. For adults, this is true even if that speech constitutes sexual or explicit content. These laws are censorship laws , and rules banning sexual content usually hurt marginalized communities and groups that serve them the most."

"Yet Australia's government recently decided to ignore these by rolling out a sweeping regime built around age verification that bans users under 16 from having social media accounts. In this world-first ban, platforms are required to introduce age assurance tools to block under-16s, demonstrate that they have taken "reasonable steps" to deactivate accounts used by under-16s, and prevent any new accounts being created or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32 million USD)."

Governments worldwide pursued age verification laws requiring all online users to verify ages before accessing digital spaces. These mandates force users to relinquish anonymity, privacy, and security to access lawful speech, including adult sexual or explicit content. Such rules operate as censorship and disproportionately harm marginalized communities and organizations that serve them. Some measures include sweeping social media bans for under-16s, illustrated by Australia’s regime that mandates age assurance tools, deactivation steps, and fines up to A$49.5 million. Banning youth does not address platforms' privacy problems, inadequate moderation, or attention-exploitative business models, and circumvention leaves young people unprotected.

Read at Electronic Frontier Foundation