Australian “Lab” Reveals The Folly Of App Store Age Verification

Policy Australian “Lab” Reveals The Folly Of App Store Age Verification By John Tamny,

Summary Australia's 2024 Social Media Minimum Age Act, effective December 2025, set a strict 16+ age for social media, transferring oversight from parents to tech companies. However, the law has largely failed, with teens easily circumventing age verification using "easy workarounds" like fake birth dates or borrowed accounts. This demonstrates that legislation cannot effectively replace parental oversight. The act has inadvertently compelled pre-16 youth to break laws for social media access, often without parental knowledge, and may have prompted some parents to lessen their own vigilance. This serves as a crucial cautionary tale for U.S. lawmakers considering similar age verification laws, illustrating that such policies are unlikely to succeed and could potentially worsen outcomes for young people.

PARIS, FRANCE - DECEMBER 14: In this photo illustration, the logos of the applications, Street View, Google Earth, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Hangouts, Google, Gmail, Chrome, Google News, Drive, Google Earth, and Chrome are displayed on the screen of an iPhone on December 14, 2020 in Paris, France. A global bug has affected Google services since midday. An unprecedented incident: most Google services, including YouTube and Gmail messaging, experienced a major global outage on Monday, December 14 at midday. Google indicated on its dashboard accessible online that all its services were affected, and this for "the majority of users". (Photo illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images)Getty Images“The kids all laugh about it, ‘What a joke, we haven’t been taken off anything.’” Those are the words of Lauren Hillier, a 42-year-old mother of two Australian teens. Hillier was describing the effects of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act to the New York Times.