Children should be forced to PROVE their age with documentation before they access social media, EE boss urges

[Artaxerxes II]

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New legislation designed to protect children online should be bolstered to force them to prove their age with a birth certificate or passport before signing up for social media, a mobile phone boss said today.

According to Ofcom, around 51 per cent of UK children aged three to 12 regularly log onto apps such as TikTok, SnapChat and Instagram - even though the minimum age is supposed to be 13.

Many youngsters simply register fake dates of birth, which allows them access to dangerous adult content, including extreme violence and pornography, on the internet.

The new Online Safety Act, which is due to come into force in the spring, requires social media firms to improve age verification, but Mat (crt) Sears, director of corporate affairs at EE, told the Mail’s Parents versus the Internet podcast that, unless it was mandated by the Government, the new Act ‘won’t be enough.’

‘There are a number of people suggesting the Online Safety Act perhaps doesn't go far enough, or at least its first iteration doesn't go far enough,’ he said. ‘The way we see it is, if the fight for online child protection was a marathon, the Online Safety Act perhaps gets us going on the first miles of that journey.

‘Age verification is one of the biggest parts of that because it can be horribly and so easily duped. We are looking for how we can better understand and legislate around age verification, and actually calls for further consultations from Government to perhaps update the Online Safety Act Mark Two, requiring more robust, age-related safety standards, is absolutely the right way and possibly the only way you can go. Just launching the Online Safety Act won't be enough to tackle all of the harms.’

He said that, in the same way that young people must show identification to buy a drink in a pub, or see a 15 or 18-rated film, teenagers should have to provide their passport or birth certificate to prove they are old enough to register for services and social media apps online.

‘Clever’ technology already exists that can determine from a photograph whether passports are real or fake, Mr Sears added.

‘Age verification is a growing issue and we're not going to be able to really see through the goals that we've set ourselves on internet safety unless we get a lot clearer on how we are going to moderate this,’ he said.

‘It's the sort of thing that can only be done at a Governmental level because it has to be set across the industry. It's not something that we could do on our own.’

Mr Sears also called for ministers to consider returning the age of data consent from 13 to 16, which he said would ‘drive a difference’ in the way social media firms use children’s information.

In the UK, the minimum age for registering to use social media apps is directed by data protection laws. The introduction of the Data Protection Act, in 2018, reduced the age at which firms collect or store personal information about children without parental permission from 16 to 13.

But Esther Ghey, the mother of murdered schoolgirl Brianna Ghey, who has been campaigning for a ban on smartphone and social media use for under 16s, said very little research has been done into ‘what age is the right age’ for children to use such apps.

‘The term age appropriateness is thrown around a lot, but the age of 13 is based on data protection laws,’ she said. ‘There’s no proper research on whether 13 is in fact the right age, and when I speak to older teenagers who’ve grown up with social media, they tell me that 13 is too young and they wish that they’d been older, say 15 or 16 before they were exposed to it.’

Last week the Australian government announced it would be introducing new laws to ban social media use for under-16s later this year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was ‘calling time’ on social media giants, such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, because ‘parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online.’

Under the legislation, social media firms will be penalised for breaching the age limit, although Mr Albanese stressed neither under 16s caught using such sites, or their parents, will be face sanction.

No plans are currently in place for a similar ban in the UK, however last month a private member’s bill was introduced to Parliament by former teacher and Labour MP Josh MacAlister. The Bill proposes that social media companies exclude under-16s from their algorithms to make content less addictive and calls for a ban on mobile phones in all schools in England to be made a legal requirement.