Like keeping alcohol away from teens or nudie magazines out of the hands of young boys, placing a big “Restricted, 18+” label on certain parts of the Internet hasn’t stopped kids from testing the limits. According to UK online security group Internet Matters, those limitations are easy to circumvent.
The group surveyed more than 1,000 UK children and their parents, and although it reported some positive effects from the changes made under OSA, many children saw age verification as an easy-to-bypass barrier rather than something that actually keeps them safe.
A full 46 percent of children even said that age checks were easy to ignore, while just 17 percent said they were difficult to fool. The methods used by children to fool vary depending on age, but most are very simple: video selfies are the classic use of a video game character to fool the system, while in other instances, children reported that they simply entered a fake birthday or used someone else’s ID card when it was required.
The report also cites cases of children drawing mustaches on their faces to fool age detection filters. seriously.
While almost half of UK children say it is easy to bypass online age verification (and another 17 percent say it is neither hard nor easy), according to Internet Matters, only 32 percent say they have actually bypassed it.
Dude, want some TikTok? my mother will tie us up
Like taking some alcohol away from “sober” parents, keeping age-based content out of children’s hands under OSA is only as effective as parents allow it, and a quarter of them enable their children to commit crimes online.
More specifically, Internet Matters found that a full 17 percent of parents admitted to actively helping their children bypass age checks, while an additional 9 percent turned a blind eye to it.
“When parents and children were talked to about these situations, they described scenarios in which the parents felt they understood the risks involved and, based on their knowledge of their child, were confident that the activity was safe,” Internet Matters said of parents who let their children engage in risky behavior as long as they did so where they could be supervised.
What this means for a large part of OSA – namely preventing children from accessing harmful content online – is falling short. Internet Matters also has data in this regard.
Half of children responding to the group’s survey (49 percent) said they had recently encountered harmful content online, which suggests that those who don’t cross the age limit are still finding it in their feeds.
So, what can be done to make protecting children online more effective? Parents told Internet Matters that lawmakers need to do more, and CEO Rachel Huggins agreed that they need help.
“Strong action is needed from both government and industry to ensure that children can only access online services appropriate for their age and stage and where protections are built in from the beginning, not in response to harm,” Huggins said in the report.
The internet affairs chief described the moment as “a timely opportunity for positive change”, pointing to the Prime Minister’s recent talks with social media firms about tackling online harm. ®
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