Age assurance and age appropriate design:what is required?

Concerns for children’s online safety recently focused on the new evidence of the possible negative effects of Instagram on teen mental health reigniting long-standing questions of how best to protect children from accessing harmful content. Age assurance is a much-debated topic in relation to children’s online safety, often cited as a plausible solution to creating an age-appropriate online environment. But what exactly is age assurance and when should it be implemented by online platforms? For www.parenting.digital, Professor Simone van der Hof discusses the legal requirements for age assurance and the suitability of different verification methods. Based on her recent research as part of the euConsent project, she argues that many of the methods currently used are either inefficient, privacy-invasive or raise issues for children rights.