The Teen Zine 

The internet has changed almost every part of our lives. We use it for school, entertainment, communication, shopping, business, and sometimes just to find an answer to a random question we thought of five seconds ago. But with all of those possibilities comes an important question:

How do we know who is actually using these online services?

For years, many websites have had a very simple answer: ask users for their date of birth and trust whatever they type.

But let’s be honest. A twelve-year-old can type in a different year and suddenly become eighteen.

That is where artificial intelligence and online age verification come in.

I believe AI should be used for online age verification because it has the potential to be more reliable than simply allowing people to enter a random date of birth. However, that does not mean companies should be allowed to collect whatever information they want.

AI age verification should have strict privacy protections, clear limitations, and a way for people to challenge decisions when the technology gets something wrong.

What Should Age Verification Actually Do?

The purpose of online age verification should be exactly what the name says: verify someone’s age.

If someone is eight years old, there are certain online services that may not be appropriate for them. If someone is fifteen, there are things they may be old enough to access that a younger child should not. If someone is an adult, there are services with age requirements that are specifically intended for adults.

It should not be more complicated than that.

I don’t think age verification should become an excuse for companies to collect someone’s entire identity just because they can.

We already give our ages to organizations in everyday life. When someone gets a library card, for example, their age can determine what type of account they are allowed to have or what permissions they receive.

Knowing someone’s age is not automatically a privacy violation.

The problem begins when a company takes information that was collected to verify age and starts using it for something else.

That is where I believe we need boundaries.

The Problem With Simply Asking

One of the biggest problems with online age restrictions is that many systems depend on people being honest.

A website can ask, “What is your date of birth?”

A person can type one in.

But that does not necessarily prove anything.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, or ICO, specifically advises organizations not to rely solely on self-declared age when there could be a meaningful risk to children. It identifies several possible methods of age assurance, including artificial intelligence, third-party verification services, account-holder confirmation, technical measures, and identification documents.

This does not mean every website needs to demand someone’s identification.

It means that the level of verification should match the level of risk.

That makes sense to me.

A news website should not necessarily require the same kind of verification as a service with strict age restrictions. Everyone should be able to access news and information. Other services may have a much stronger reason to confirm that a user meets a minimum age.

Age verification should be proportional to what is being protected.

AI Could Make Age Verification More Reliable

This is where AI becomes useful.

Instead of asking someone to simply type in their birthday, an AI system could estimate or verify whether someone meets an age requirement.

That does not mean AI will magically know someone’s exact age. AI can make mistakes just like humans can.

But I would rather have a system designed to actually check an age than one that simply says, “Type in your birthday and we’ll trust you.”

The Federal Trade Commission has recognized age-verification technology as a potentially important tool for protecting children online. In February 2026, the FTC issued a policy statement allowing certain websites and online services to collect information specifically for age verification under certain conditions.

Those conditions include limiting the information’s use to age verification, deleting it when it is no longer needed, protecting it with reasonable security measures, and taking reasonable steps to ensure the method provides accurate results.

That is important because it shows that the conversation is not simply about whether age verification should exist.

It is also about how it should be done.

But Please Don’t Take My Face

If you asked me what I would be comfortable giving an AI to prove my age, my answer would probably not be my face.

That is where I start getting uncomfortable.

Facial age estimation might seem convenient. You could potentially take a picture, have the system estimate your age, and move on. But when I give a company my face, I have to trust that company to protect that information.

What happens if the company gets hacked?

My school recently experienced a security incident where students were told not to panic, but were also warned that some information might have been exposed. Situations like that remind me that data breaches are not just some imaginary problem that happens to other people.

And facial information feels different from a password.

If someone gets your password, you can change it.

You cannot exactly change your face.

That is why I think companies need to be extremely careful about requiring biometric information for something as simple as verifying age.

I am not saying facial technology should never be used. For example, I am comfortable with my phone recognizing my face to unlock my own device. That is my phone, and I have chosen to use that feature.

But giving biometric information to a large company for age verification is a different situation.

I would want to know exactly what information is being collected, who can access it, how long it will be kept, and what happens if the company experiences a data breach.

An ID Is More Official, But It Still Requires Trust

Another option is using an identification document.

Personally, I understand why people would see this as a reasonable option. That is what identification documents are for: identification.

But an ID also contains information that people may not want to hand over to every website they visit.

This creates a balancing act.

On one side, we want reliable age verification.

On the other, we don’t want to create a system where every website can collect huge amounts of personal information just because someone wants to access a particular service.

Ideally, a company should be able to verify that someone meets an age requirement without collecting information it does not actually need.

Instead of giving a website your entire identity, the result could simply be:

Age requirement met.

That is enough.

The ICO’s guidance supports this principle of data minimization. It says organizations should collect only the minimum personal information needed for the purpose and should not reuse information gathered for age assurance for unrelated purposes such as advertising profiles.

I think that should be the standard.

What Happens When AI Gets It Wrong?

AI is not perfect.

Imagine someone is nineteen years old, but an AI system thinks they are sixteen and blocks them from something they are actually old enough to access.

They should be able to challenge that decision.

I believe everything should be able to be appealed when an automated system makes a decision about you.

I have personally experienced what it feels like when someone assumes something about your work based on an automated AI detector. I once had a paper questioned because someone believed it was AI-generated. I had to show my notes and explain that I had actually written the paper myself.

That experience taught me something simple:

A computer’s decision is not automatically the truth.

The ICO makes a similar point in its age-assurance guidance. It notes that AI-based age estimation is a statistically informed estimate, not an unquestionable fact, and recommends processes for challenging inaccurate results and obtaining human review.

If an AI system is going to decide whether someone can access something, people need a way to say:

“You got it wrong.”

And someone needs to actually listen.

Who Should Be Responsible?

Protecting minors online cannot be placed entirely on one person.

Parents have a responsibility. Users have a responsibility. Companies have a responsibility.

But I believe the government should carry the biggest responsibility for establishing the rules.

Not every minor has a parent who is able or willing to monitor everything they do online.

That is why I think of the government as the “parent of all parents.”

It has the ability to create rules that apply across companies and platforms.

Governments should establish clear requirements for AI companies, social media platforms, and other technology companies.

Companies should have to explain what information they collect and why. They should have to protect that information. They should have to limit how long they keep it. And they should have to provide a way for people to challenge inaccurate decisions.

The FTC’s 2026 policy statement takes a similar approach by tying age-verification use to conditions involving purpose limitation, deletion, security, notice, and accuracy.

Everyone has a role, but companies and governments have a particularly important one because they are the ones building and regulating the systems.

Should Age Verification Be Everywhere?

No.

I don’t think every website needs the same level of age verification.

Social media platforms should take age seriously because they are used by huge numbers of young people.

Dating services should have strong age verification because knowing the age of the people using the service is important for safety.

Online stores may need age verification for certain age-restricted products.

Gaming depends on the game and the type of content involved.

News websites are different. I believe everyone should be informed, so I don’t think simply reading the news should require an age check.

AI services should also depend on what the service actually does. A general-purpose AI assistant is different from an AI service specifically designed around adult-oriented interactions.

This is why I keep coming back to one idea:

The level of verification should match the level of risk.

The ICO recommends exactly this kind of proportionate approach, saying services should establish age with a level of certainty appropriate to the risks involved.

Parents can also have a role in some situations. We already do this in other areas of life. A movie might be labeled as requiring parental guidance rather than being completely unavailable to younger viewers. Parents can make decisions about what their children are ready to see.

Age verification does not have to mean that every decision is taken away from parents.

The Biggest Problem Is Not Verification. It’s What Happens to the Information.

My biggest concern with age verification is not actually proving someone’s age.

It is what happens afterward.

If I give a company my information, I should not have to wonder whether it is going to be stored forever, sold, used for advertising, or sitting somewhere waiting to become part of the next data breach.

And people should not have to assume that checking a box means they have agreed to everything hidden inside a privacy policy.

Companies need to make their privacy practices understandable.

If someone chooses to save their information for convenience, that should be their choice. It should not automatically happen simply because they wanted to verify their age.

The FTC’s current policy specifically requires covered services using personal information for age verification to limit its use to that purpose, delete it promptly after it is no longer needed, and maintain reasonable security safeguards.

Those should not be viewed as optional extras.

They should be the foundation.

If You’re Doing Nothing Wrong, Why Should You Care?

Some people might ask:

“If you’re doing nothing wrong, why should you care about proving your age?”

Because you are not the only person affected.

Think about any age-restricted situation in the real world. If someone is not old enough but lies about their age, the consequences do not necessarily stop with that person. Businesses can face serious consequences for allowing someone under the required age to access something.

Age requirements exist for a reason.

The same principle can apply online.

But that does not mean companies should have unlimited access to our personal information.

We should be able to prove what needs to be proven without automatically handing over everything else.

AI Needs Stipulations and Limitations

AI has the potential to do great things, but it also has the potential to do bad things.

That is why I believe AI needs stipulations and limitations, just like all good, growing things need.

The goal should not be to ban AI because we are afraid of what it could become.

The goal should be to understand it well enough to know where boundaries need to exist.

AI age verification could help solve a real problem. Simply asking people to enter a birthday does not provide much certainty. AI and other age-assurance technologies could make online age restrictions more meaningful.

But better verification should not mean less privacy.

If companies want people to trust these systems, they need to prove that they deserve that trust.

That means collecting the minimum amount of information necessary. It means protecting that information. It means deleting it when it is no longer needed. It means testing AI systems for accuracy and bias. And it means giving people a way to challenge an automated decision.

Most importantly, it means remembering what age verification is actually supposed to accomplish.

Verify the age. Protect the person. Nothing more than necessary.

AI should not be treated as something that is automatically good or automatically bad.

It is a tool, and like any powerful tool, what matters is how people choose to use it.

If we are going to keep building AI into our everyday lives, we need to understand it, regulate it, and work with it rather than against it.

Because the goal should never be to create a system that knows everything about us.

The goal should be to create a system that knows only what it needs to know.

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Sources
1.    Federal Trade Commission. “FTC Issues COPPA Policy Statement to Incentivize the Use of Age Verification Technologies to Protect Children Online.” February 25, 2026. 
FTC: Age Verification Technologies and COPPA 
2.    Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). “Age assurance: Estimating or verifying the age of service users.” 
ICO: Age Assurance Guidance 
3.    Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). “Expectations for age assurance and data protection compliance.” 
ICO: Age Assurance and Data Protection 
4.    Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). “Recommended actions in the Children’s Code.” 
ICO: Children's Code Recommendations 
5.    Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). “Age assurance: Age-appropriate design.” 
ICO: Age Assurance and Privacy 
6.    Federal Trade Commission. “Protecting American Children: A Workshop to Explore Age Verification Technologies.” January 28, 2026. 
FTC: Age Verification Workshop