Age verification for social media – the beginning of the end for a free internet? | Mullvad VPN
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Age verification for social media – the beginning of the end for a free internet?<br>June 1, 2026 Privacy<br>So-called age verification for social media is spreading across the world, framed as an effort to create a safer internet for children. In reality, age verification lays the foundation for a fully government controlled internet.
Countries around the world are moving to introduce online age verification. Part of this involves age verification for harmful content (most often pornography, sometimes video games), but above all it focuses on banning social media for children.
The big tech social media companies are bad. Their business model is bad; it is based on mass surveillance and manipulation, and they cooperate with governments in mapping entire populations. But age verification is fundamentally the wrong approach to preventing children from using big tech social media platforms. Introducing age verification is based on the state being able to force social media companies to verify their users’ identities. But the big tech social media platforms already know which of their users are children. Their business model depends on knowing this. They know how old users are, who their friends are and what ice cream they like. As age verification is based on coercion of the social media platforms, politicians could instead force them to stop doing the things politicians consider harmful to children, or force them to block children (again, they know who they are) from using their services. But instead, politicians seek to massively invade everyone’s privacy and undermine democratic rights on a global scale. In other words, the latter is the real objective – they do not want to protect children; they want to impose control.
And impose it they do. Australia has already introduced a social media age restriction for users under 16. The same applies to Indonesia and Brazil. Age restrictions have been approved but not yet implemented in Denmark, Portugal, and Malaysia. In France, an agreement has been reached, though details are still being discussed. Proposals are on the table in Spain and Turkey. In Germany, the major parties agree on introducing age restrictions, and in Sweden the issue is under investigation. The topic is also being discussed in countries such as the Czech Republic, Greece, Austria, Poland, Canada, Slovenia, and the Netherlands. In April 2026, the European Commission launched an EU age verification app, and one month later Ursula von der Leyen presented plans for EU-wide age restrictions. In the United States, half of all states either have pending legislation or have already introduced laws imposing age restrictions for inappropriate content and/or social media. The number of countries preparing age verification measures is growing rapidly. Updates can be followed on Techpolicy.press.
Most age verification is identity verification
As age verification is currently being rolled out, it is up to individual websites and services to implement it as they see fit. As a result, the quality of age verification measures varies greatly. This became clear in the autumn of 2025, when Discord was hacked, exposing the ID documents of 70,000 users. However, there is one common factor in most age verification systems (Zero-Knowledge Proof being an exception, more on that below): if age verification is introduced, everyone will have to identify themselves either to the service/website they want to use or to a third party capable of linking them to their activity on that service/website. The correct term for age verification as it is implemented today is therefore identity verification. Given today’s internet infrastructure, it is unreasonable to assume that this information will not be shared through commercial agreements or with governments.
The consequence of introducing identity verification is therefore that freedom of information is restricted (you can no longer visit regulated websites anonymously) and that you can no longer post anonymously on social media. You cannot be certain that your criticism of the government will not be followed up by the authorities. You can no longer start a digital initiative on a social media platform aimed at gathering people to criticize an authority without facing a significant risk of consequences. Depending on the country you live in, this could even endanger your life. In its current form, social media identity verification removes important tools for activists in countries where criticizing those in power is dangerous.
Freedom of expression is threatened not only in a direct sense (you post something and then the police knock on your door), identity verification also creates a chilling effect. It becomes a cornerstone of censorship machinery in the sense that...