Ofcom Sets Out Four 'Highly Effective' Ways Social Media Firms Can Verify Users Are Over 16

Ofcom has now said how it thinks the UK can find out which of its social media users are under 16. The regulator has published its recommendations on age checks, ahead of a ban due to take effect in March next year. Under that ban, anyone below 16 will be blocked from ten of the biggest platforms, among them Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

The recommendations are subject to government approval, and their reach goes well beyond teenagers. Many adults are likely to have to prove they are not under-age by using one of the proposed measures. Ofcom has no firm figure for how many, but it conceded that it would be a "large number of accounts" for the companies to deal with.

The difficulty is specific to this age group. Checking whether someone is 18 is relatively simple. Checking whether they are 16 is not, because 16 and 17 year olds don't have credit cards or full driving licences, and may not hold passports. They can also look significantly older or younger than they are.

Beyond traditional forms of ID, Ofcom named four methods it calls "highly effective." The first is photo ID matching, in which details on a document such as a passport are compared with a live image taken during the age check. The second is banking-based checks, which draw on the age a financial institution already has on record. The third is facial age estimation, a technology the regulator argues has improved recently. The fourth is digital ID services, which let people prove who they are or share details such as their age. The BBC has asked three of the UK's biggest banks whether they would have a process to help with social media age requests if banking checks became an official measure.

Ofcom is not telling companies which of these to use. The onus is on the social networks to devise their own solutions and comply. Chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes said that approach reflects what the regulator learned bringing in tougher age checks on porn sites last year. Many countries before the UK, she told the BBC, were very prescriptive about how it had to be done, and it didn't work. Ofcom's line has been that these are things that can work, they must preserve privacy and protect data, but it is up to each firm to put in place what suits it.

Some tech companies, Meta among them, have argued for age verification at device level, so an under-age user would be automatically blocked from installing social media apps through app stores. That would put responsibility on Apple and Google, which between them run most of the world's smartphones. Apple has already introduced age verification in the UK. Ofcom says device-level checks would not relieve the social networks of doing their own.

The regulator is open about the limits. It has acknowledged that "the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated" and that some children will get past the checks. Australia brought in a similar ban last year, and many children there have found ways around it. The UK says it intends to be tougher.

Dawes described the job as shared. Ofcom's part, she said, is making sure the services put in the checks they need to, but how everyone else engages with the ban is a question for everybody. She said she sees the real prize in today's eight to 10-year-olds entering secondary school without it being the norm to be on Snap in the class group chat or to have sports fixtures organised on Instagram.

Ofcom's report now goes to the government, which is due to decide by the end of the year. With the ban set for March, the open questions are which methods the platforms choose and how responsibility is divided between them and Apple and Google.