Many social media apps have been pushing for age verification over the past 1-2 years. With these new changes to these apps, people worry about how they will be affected.
Age verification is a newer system among social media apps that requires users to verify their age in order to access certain content on these apps. Verification methods usually involve sharing government ID or other sensitive information.
Advertising tends to target younger audiences, promoting certain ideologies before they are ready to understand and accept them, said Alan McCall, AP Computer Science teacher, who continued, saying “adding an age restriction to that … allows parents to have more control.”
In August, YouTube implemented a new age-verification system, which many users found concerning. “Some digital rights groups … have raised concerns that age verification could infringe on personal privacy and violate First Amendment protections on free speech,” according to APNews.
When the update was released, reality showed that it didn’t change much, and users could still do everything they did before. The update was intended to disable personalized advertising, turn on digital wellbeing tools, and add safeguards to recommendations, according to YouTube.
Recently, the social media app Discord announced that it was planning on adding a new age verification system, which worried Discord members as it required “face scanning or requests for an ID upload for users it could not determine were adults,” according to APNews.
Stanislav Vishnevskiy, the Co-Founder of Discord, responded to the conflict. “The way this landed, many of you walked away thinking we’re requiring face scans and ID uploads just to use Discord. That’s not what’s happening,” Vishnevskiy said in a post on discord.com.
Vishnevskiy continues to talk about how the update intends to improve user experience for all ages, and the majority of users can continue using Discord the same way without ever having to verify their age. The update will mostly focus on hiding age-restricted content from users who haven’t verified their age as over 18. According to APNews, one of the biggest concerns comes from a recent data breach from Discord that leaked over 70,000 government IDs.
Vishnevskiy commented on this breach and explained how things have changed. “We do not use that vendor for age assurance. In fact, we no longer work with them at all,” Vishnevskiy explained on discord.com. Vishnevskiy also mentioned that Discord is now committed to documenting every verification vendor they work with, and allowing multiple methods of verification with clear information on how data is handled.
Age verification has shown both positive and negative effects. Whether it’s good or bad depends on what is done to find safer verification methods, and regardless of where it leads, users need to feel comfortable knowing that their information is safe.
