Age Verification Laws Risk Locking Millions Off the Internet

Policymakers typically frame age verification as a straightforward bargain: accept modest privacy intrusions in exchange for stronger protections for minors in digital spaces. Yet this framing sidesteps a more pressing concern: what becomes of individuals unable to demonstrate their age through official channels? The problem intensifies when verification hinges on possession of government-issued identity documents.

Jurisdictions across the globe are moving swiftly to impose age-based restrictions on digital services. Though these policies vary considerably by region, the past year has seen a marked acceleration in mandates requiring users to confirm their age before accessing social media platforms and other services deemed high-risk.

• Australia enacted legislation in late 2025 establishing 16 as the minimum age for social media account creation, becoming the first nation to implement such a blanket prohibition.
• India's Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act mandates verifiable parental approval and has initiated discussions around restricting social media use.
• The United Kingdom's Online Safety Act requires age verification for numerous services offering content potentially harmful to users under 18. Across the United States, more than half of all states have passed age verification legislation.
• An expert report from the EU Commission recommends prohibiting social media access for users younger than 13 and calls for mandatory age verification systems to enforce age-appropriate platform access.

The Access Problem

When age verification requirements depend on possession of a current passport, driver's license, credit card, or comparable identity credentials, they systematically exclude vast segments of the population. This challenge transcends national borders: hundreds of millions worldwide either lack government-issued identification or face persistent obstacles in obtaining or renewing such documents.

Within the United States alone, approximately 15 million adults do not possess a driver's license, while an additional 2.6 million lack any form of government-issued photo identification. These gaps leave substantial populations unable to access online content or services. The United Kingdom encounters comparable difficulties, as age confirmation often requires passports, driver's licenses, or recognized equivalents—documents that create distinct hardships for those without them.

Much of the discourse surrounding age verification concentrates on privacy violations. However, these systems threaten something more elemental: universal access to information and the capacity to exercise freedom of expression.

Age verification mechanisms generate unequal information access and deliver an imbalanced response to the need for discovering vital information, forming connections, and participating in civic dialogue. As governments and corporations increasingly demand age proof before granting access to online platforms, affected individuals face potential exclusion from substantial portions of the internet.

Effects on Global Majority Countries

Age verification mandates fundamentally reshape participation in digital spaces by determining who can communicate, who can retrieve information, and who faces exclusion from the online public sphere. In essence, age verification functions not as a neutral safeguard but as a structural mechanism that disproportionately blocks certain populations—particularly those in the global majority—and transforms the landscape of worldwide digital expression. Numerous of these groups already experience marginalization in physical communities, and age verification extends that exclusion into digital environments.

Approximately 850 million individuals globally possess no formal identification. The vast majority reside in low and middle-income nations across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. According to the World Bank, many belong to already-marginalized communities, and more than half of those without identity documentation also have children whose births remain unregistered. Women face particular vulnerability, being 8% less likely than men to hold identification. Other at-risk populations—including adults in economically disadvantaged countries under age 25, those with primary school education or less, and residents of rural regions—similarly experience lower identification rates.

Research from EDRi demonstrates that age verification laws present expedient technological remedies while disregarding entrenched structural inequities and compromising the internet's universal character. The findings reveal that such legislation carries grave human rights consequences and paradoxically damages the very individuals these measures purport to safeguard. Furthermore, these frameworks depend on gathering extensive personal data—a practice that human rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have opposed for decades.

• Morocco's proposed restrictions would prevent those under 13 from opening gaming platform accounts, creating complications for individuals whose identification documents lack complete birth year information and for those attempting to relocate outside the country.
• Egypt's identification card shortage has produced barriers for minority populations including the Baha'i community.
• Stateless persons encounter severe difficulties under age verification requirements. The Rohingya, representing the world's largest stateless population, frequently lack identification documents.
• Kuwait's Bidoon population similarly lacks adequate identification credentials. According to Amnesty International, many depend on standard civil identity cards, which impose significant limitations.
• Nigeria initiated a national identification program in 2007. To date, 64.4 million individuals have enrolled, representing just over 30% of the country's total population.
• The Kafala system, practiced across multiple Middle Eastern nations, creates obstacles for age verification enforcement. Under this framework, migrant workers' residency rights and employment status remain tied to a single employer, potentially rendering stateless individuals and migrant workers susceptible to labor exploitation and movement restrictions.

No ID, No Access

Age verification mandates function less as genuine age confirmation mechanisms and more as obstacles to digital participation that numerous individuals cannot realistically overcome. The outcome is diminished access, expanded data collection, and heightened risk of wrongful or discriminatory exclusion from online information.

Few dispute the significance of safeguarding minors in digital environments. Although supporters contend that age verification laws shield young people from harmful material, harassment, and compulsive use, these laws represent a flawed approach. They undermine core freedom of expression protections and introduce substantial privacy dangers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has consistently cautioned against age-restricting internet access. Age verification systems themselves frequently prove unreliable and invasive, and as additional nations contemplate ID-dependent verification, the hazards extend past censorship and monitoring toward complete exclusion of entire populations. This is why the organization collaborates with partners domestically and internationally to counter such legislation, and why participation in this resistance matters.