PNW STAFF
There are moments in public policy when a proposal is presented as pure common sense--so obvious, so morally packaged, so politically irresistible--that few stop to ask the harder question: At what cost? Today, that moment is the swift and global push for mandatory age verification across the internet.
Last week, members of Congress reviewed 19 separate "online safety" bills, each promising to protect minors from the worst corners of the web. It sounds noble. It sounds responsible. It sounds overdue.
But beneath the surface, a different story is unfolding--one that privacy experts, digital rights organizations, and increasingly wary citizens are sounding the alarm over. The growing wave of age-verification requirements in the U.S., Europe, and now Australia's sweeping new social media ban for teens, may well be the biggest step yet toward what governments have quietly desired for years: a national digital identification system.
The true danger lies not in the protection of minors, but in the system required to enforce it.
A Global Tide of Age Verification
The numbers are staggering:
25 U.S. states now require some form of age verification for accessing large categories of online content.
The UK has passed the Online Safety Act mandating verification.
And on December 10, Australia implemented a historic new law forcing social media platforms to delete or deactivate all accounts held by anyone under 16 years old--an unprecedented mandate that major platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have already begun complying with.
Australia's move is especially important. For better or worse, it acts as a policy test case for the rest of the Western world. When Australia imposed some of the strictest pandemic rules on Earth, other nations followed. When Australia launched sweeping online content restrictions, similar efforts emerged across Europe. It is widely expected that the teen social media ban will inspire new age-verification pushes in Canada, the UK, and eventually the United States.
Once the global policy dominoes start tipping, there's no turning back.
The Trojan Horse:
Advocates for digital liberty warn that mandatory age checks require one thing above all: identity proof. It may begin with uploading a driver's license or submitting to a facial scan to prove you're not a minor, but the long-term implications are far deeper.
Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization leading a week-long protest campaign, frames it bluntly:
Age verification means identification, and identification means surveillance.
Once the government or third-party firms must confirm your identity to access social media, video platforms, e-commerce, or even news websites, a universal digital identity infrastructure becomes unavoidable.
This is the Trojan horse.
Not because the government demands a national digital ID outright--but because age verification laws force it into place through the back door.
Every adult, of every age, would eventually be required to prove they are not a minor before accessing basic online utilities. As Fight for the Future campaigner Sarah Philips put it:
"In actuality, if we age-gate the internet and implement mandates, you have to prove that you're not a child--whether you're 18 or 50. Everyone will have to interact with this."
In most states, age verification is outsourced to third-party companies. These companies already struggle with breaches, hacks, and rampant data harvesting. Now imagine those same entities storing:
Facial scans
Government IDs
Browsing habits
Identity verification logs
All tied to a person's permanent digital footprint.
Suddenly, online anonymity--the very thing that has protected political dissidents, whistleblowers, abuse survivors, and persecuted religious minorities--is gone.
And once governments discover the power of tying identification to content, the temptation to expand its use will be unstoppable.
Safety Is the Sales Pitch. Control Is the Destination.
No one denies the genuine need to protect children online. The dangers are real--predators, explicit content, radicalization, and exploitation.
But the question is not the goal. It is the mechanism.
1 comment:
Children on push bikes have just caused a major traffic jam in Brisbane Australia. Hopefully they will do this every day until the communist government breaks.
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