The FTC Wants to Know Your Age—And Tech Giants Are Ready to Verify It

The Age Verification Crossroads

On January 28, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission held an all day virtual workshop that put one of the internet's thorniest debates front and center: should websites verify your age, and if so, how?

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson opened the event by framing age verification as a critical tool for child safety online. The workshop brought together an unusual coalition—tech giants like Google, Meta, and Apple sat alongside privacy advocates, academic researchers, and international regulators to discuss the future of proving who you are on the internet.

Why Age Verification Matters Now

The push for age verification stems from growing concern about children's exposure to harmful content and predatory design patterns. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act requires parental consent before collecting data from users under 13, but enforcement has been limited by the difficulty of actually knowing who's a child.

Meanwhile, states are passing their own laws. Virginia now limits minors to one hour of social media per day unless parents consent to more. Texas tried requiring age verification for certain websites but was blocked on First Amendment grounds in December 2025. The regulatory landscape is fragmented and uncertain.

Representatives from the UK Information Commissioner's Office shared how Britain has already implemented age assurance requirements, offering lessons—and warnings—for US regulators.

The Technology Options

A panel featuring executives from age verification companies Persona and Yoti, alongside researchers from Carnegie Mellon's CyLab, surveyed the current landscape of age assurance tools:

• ID document verification: Users upload a driver's license or passport. High accuracy but creates sensitive data storage.
• Facial age estimation: AI analyzes a selfie to estimate age range. No documents required but less precise.
• Credit card verification: Assumes card holders are adults. Easy to circumvent and excludes legitimate minors.
• Third party attestation: External services vouch for age without revealing identity. Privacy preserving but adds complexity.

Each approach involves tradeoffs between accuracy, privacy, and user friction. No solution satisfies everyone.

The Privacy Concerns

Privacy advocates at the workshop, including representatives from the Future of Privacy Forum and the Public Interest Privacy Center, raised fundamental objections. Age verification creates new surveillance risks:

• Data collection: Verifying age requires collecting identity documents, biometric data, or behavioral signals—all sensitive information that can be breached or misused.
• Tracking potential: Linking identity verification to website access creates logs of where people go online.
• Chilling effects: Knowing your identity is verified may discourage accessing sensitive content—health information, political speech, whistleblower resources.
• Exclusion: People without ID documents, stable addresses, or credit cards get locked out of the verified internet.

The tension between protecting children and surveilling everyone remains unresolved. As one panelist noted, the tools that verify age can just as easily verify identity—and create permanent records of online activity.

What Google, Meta, and Apple Said

A deployment panel brought together representatives from the largest platforms to discuss real world implementation challenges. The tech giants are already building age verification systems—the question is what form they'll take.

Platform representatives emphasized the scale challenges: verifying billions of users requires systems that work across jurisdictions, languages, and document types. They also highlighted the tension between regulatory demands for verification and user expectations for privacy.

What wasn't said may be equally important. Platforms have business reasons to know user ages beyond child safety—age data improves ad targeting and content personalization. Mandatory verification conveniently solves a data collection problem while wearing a child protection label.

The COPPA Connection

Much of the workshop focused on how age verification intersects with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. COPPA requires parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13, but the law's effectiveness depends on knowing who's actually a child.

Currently, most sites rely on self declaration—users simply check a box saying they're over 13. This is widely understood to be ineffective. Kids lie about their age, and platforms have little incentive to look too closely.

Stronger age verification could make COPPA enforceable, but it would also mean requiring identity verification from everyone—adults included—just to prove they're not children. The privacy cost falls on the entire population to protect a subset of users.

What Happens Next

The workshop didn't produce binding rules or immediate policy changes. Instead, it serves as a signal of FTC priorities and a forum for stakeholders to shape the debate.

Commissioner Mark Meador and other FTC officials indicated that age verification will remain a focus area as the agency considers enforcement priorities and potential rulemaking. The workshop transcript and public comments will inform future decisions.

Meanwhile, states continue passing their own laws, platforms continue building verification infrastructure, and the fundamental tension remains unresolved. Proving your age online is becoming normalized—and with it, proving your identity to access an internet that was once anonymous by default.

The Privacy Implications for Everyone

Age verification doesn't stop at children's sites. Once the infrastructure exists to verify ages, it can be applied anywhere. Adult content sites, social media, e-commerce, streaming services—any platform with age gated content becomes a candidate for mandatory verification.

For privacy conscious users, the trend is concerning. Anonymous browsing becomes harder when websites demand identity proof. The ability to explore information without leaving a trail—a cornerstone of internet privacy—erodes as verification requirements spread.

The FTC workshop made clear that age verification is coming. The open question is whether it can be implemented in ways that protect children without creating a surveillance architecture that tracks everyone else.