Age Checks Aren’t the Answer—They’re a Messy, Flawed Gamble
Fourteen-year-old Carolina thought Roblox’s new age check would trap her in a digital purgatory—until the AI guessed she was 16. Now she’s navigating a system that’s supposed to protect kids but might be failing them all.
"Without any makeup, I did what the app asked: turned my head this way and that for the photo," said 14-year-old Carolina, who was misidentified as 16-17 by Roblox’s facial recognition age check.
Her experience highlights a growing tension between digital safety and privacy, as platforms deploy AI to enforce age restrictions while users find workarounds.
"Age-verification technologies are not infallible," said Simone Lahorgue Nunes, a Brazilian lawyer, noting minors use AI-generated deepfakes and fake IDs to bypass checks.
Roblox’s system allows 16-17-year-olds to chat with users aged 13-15 and 18-20, exposing younger users to harassment risks.
Meanwhile, experts warn that flawed biometric systems disproportionately harm marginalized groups by eroding anonymity. Internet Freedom Foundation founder Apar Gupta argues platform design flaws—like addictive features cause more harm than anonymous access.
"It is a potent tool to kill dissent and end the last vestige of protection that a lot of marginalized identities have online," said Shivangi Narayan, an Indian sociology professor, on age verification’s threat to anonymity.
Global regulatory efforts complicate the issue further. Brazil, Malaysia, and India are developing national age-verification systems to replace U.S.-based vendors like Jumio. Yet data breaches like Discord’s 2023 leak of 70,000 users’ government ID data—raise questions about centralized identity checks.
Users on Reddit recommend fake IDs of historical figures like Stalin to bypass Roblox’s checks, while critics warn such systems could drive users to the dark web.
