Age-gating

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Age-gating, also known as age bracketing or age segregation, is the practice of classifying and separating users according to their age range on an online platform, usually under the claim that it would increase the security of children and teenagers. It adds restrictions for unverified users or underage users, preventing them to access to certain features of the internet or a platform.

Some of platforms that apply age-gating are social media or online games with user interaction features, in order to comply with an enforced or enacted legislation that mandates the implementation of these online restrictions. However, sometimes the publishers of a platform release age-gating as a global feature, regardless if a country or state has a dedicated legislation to enforce this, affecting the freedom and privacy of users of regions that do not have any plan to introduce or propose such legislations.

How it works

Age-gating is usually done after a user verifies their age on social media or another platform. Sometimes, if the user doesn't verify their age, they're flagged as a child of teenager.

Age-gating segregates users according to their age group, which can vary according to the platform or region. Basic age-gating methods segregate users under 18 from users who are 18 or over.

Users that are flagged as underage usually face limited access to certain features of the platform, being locked into "safe-by-design" modes. Some of the restrictions applied in "safe-by-design" modes usually implement time limits, impossibility to talk with other users or block certain types of content. For example, an online game could prevent a child to talk with an adult or a social media might restrict the daily hours a child can stay online.

Why it is a problem

Censorship

Age-gating might lead into the censorship of the open internet. This could ent into the censorship of lawful resources that might be educative for a child or teenager (like LGBT+ topics or information about first aid), and a censorship for adult people who hasn't verified and wants to browse anonymously the web.

Platform overreach

Unverified users that are of a higher age or adults that are put on lower age groups might experience arbitrary restrictions. These changes lock them to "safe-by-design" modes (like child or teen-by-default), which usually treat the user like "guilty until proven innocent", by not allowing them to have the highest freedom possible until they verify their age, or find a workaround to bypass the age verification.

Because of the arbitrary restrictions that age-gating apply to underage users, parents or legal representatives are unable to have full control over their children's accounts and configure them to their liking.

User isolation

Some age-gating features implemented on these platforms don't allow users from different age groups to talk each other. This might prevent legitimate communication between users of different age groups. For example, an adult that lives far away from their sibling who is 11 years old want to play a game, but because of age-gating, they couldn't talk in-game, declining gameplay experience.

Innacuracy

Age verification methods like face scanning or behavioral predictions might fail, flagging adult users as children or vice versa, turning age-gating into a non-effective feature to address the issues it claims it solves.

Risk of exploitation

Poorly made age verification systems could be tricked easily, which can allow children to access adult spaces and adults that are predators to find easier their victims. This also might lead into dedicated markets selling accounts verified on certain age brackets.

Examples

• Roblox introducing mandatory age verification globally for all their users in order to access to chat. The age verification methods have been questioned because of their frequent innacuracy at estimating a user's age via face scans. Also, when age-gating was introduced, several users started to sell verified accounts on E-bay.

• Discord implementing a mandatory global age verification for all of their users, flagging as under 18 unverified users, including adults.
• China imposing time limits for users under 18 in online games.