App store age verification as a path toward digital safety carries risks

As teens spend increasing time on digital devices and social media parents and lawmakers debate how best to protect them through regulations focusing on screen time limits and details collection practices While safety remains paramount proposed solutions require careful review to prevent new vulnerabilities or key technical and measure risks One such proposal as promoted in this commentary in MinnPost has been to move age verification from individual platforms to app stores App store age verification appears streamlined and efficient but this convenience risks compromising robust measure protocols and creating unclear lines of accountability particularly concerning when dealing with children s details This centralized approach would establish a single point of failure for sensitive personal material making it an attractive target for malicious actors Moreover storing verification content at the app store level would make personal information potentially accessible across all downloaded applications vastly increasing the menace of facts breaches and misuse Particular of the patronage for this approach that is backed by the social media industry seems driven more by operational convenience than by thorough safety considerations This could consequence in the function being abused by bad actors to steal and abuse our kids figures at a time when material breaches are reaching all-time highs Implemented solutions to protect children in digital spaces must achieve a delicate equilibrium between protection measures privacy protections and practical effectiveness While app store verification may present an apparently straightforward implementation path it falls short of addressing core safety requirements Instead Minnesota legislators must pursue comprehensive verification methodologies that simultaneously strengthen both child protection mechanisms and personal content measure protocols Michael Halagan is a consultant and founder of Local AI The post App store age verification as a path toward digital safety carries risks appeared first on MinnPost