Summary
The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) has published a report examining the feasibility of using age assurance to enforce a minimum age of 16 for social media in the UK.
The report outlines current age assurance technologies, their ability to establish whether a user is aged 16 or over, and measures that can help prevent users from circumventing age checks. It also considers the existing regulatory context, including Ofcom and the ICO's expectations for highly effective age assurance.
Ofcom is due to report to Parliament on the feasibility of age assurance to implement a minimum age of 16 for social media in the UK. We consulted our members and have provided this report on the state of the art of current age assurance technology when it comes to confirming a user is 16 or older. We also set out the available mitigation strategies to tackle circumvention of each method of highly effective age assurance.
Earlier this year, Ofcom and the ICO jointly announced they expected the use of highly effective age assurance to enforce terms of service with a minimum age of 13, so have already indicated their confidence in the ability of checks to deliver sufficiently robust outcomes at an even younger age.