Social media could use facial recognition to root out underage users in UK

[Karah Rucker]

Social media sites could use facial recognition to root out underage users in the U.K., under plans set to be unveiled in January.

The tech could “drive out” millions of underage children from platforms, according to the head of online safety policy for Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Ofcom’s Jon Higham said “The sort of thing that we might look to in that space is some of this facial age estimation technology that we see companies bringing in now, which we think is really pretty good at determining who is a child and who is an adult.”

“So we’re going to be looking to drive out the use of that sort of content, so platforms can determine who’s a child and who isn’t, and then put in place extra protections for kids to stop them seeing toxic content,” He added.

Ofcom estimates 60% of eight to 11-year-old children have social media accounts. So, that affects more than 1.5 million kids in the U.K. Most major social media platforms have an age floor of 13.

Higham says more than 20% of under-age children, who do have social media accounts, claim to be adults.

“It doesn’t take a genius to work out that children are going to lie about their age. So we think there’s a big issue there,” he told the Telegraph.

Amid global scrutiny of the effect of social media on children, platforms have rolled out more ways to verify age including scanning IDs, facial age estimation and even having an adult confirm age.

But Ofcom research shows that age verification isn’t triggered that often. When it comes to being asked to verify age. Only 18 percent of Instagram users triggered a check, while 19 percent of TikTok users had to provide proof and just 14 percent of snap chat users were ever asked.

Next month, Ofcom will officially lay out exactly what it expects from social media sites to do to make sure their users aren’t under age.

But Higham says the regulator will expect “the technology to be highly accurate and effective. We’re not going to let people use poor or substandard mechanisms to verify kids’ age.”

Failure to comply with these rules could result in a big bill for tech giants. Under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, Ofcom can fine tech companies that fail to protect children up to 10% of global revenue. That could run around $12 billion for a company like Facebook. For persistent failures to protect kids, executives could be jailed for up to 2 years.
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