Discuss the ethical and regulatory challenges in mandating age verification on digital platforms. How does the EU's proposed KIDS Act attempt to shift accountability onto tech companies?

An OECD review of 50 online services used by children found only two systematically assured age at account creation [4] — exposing how weakly age limits are enforced. Mandating verification is therefore necessary, but it raises real ethical and regulatory dilemmas that the EU's proposed KIDS Act tries to answer by re-assigning responsibility to platforms.

Ethical challenges

• Privacy versus protection: certified checks require users to surrender identity proof; under the Puttaswamy (2017) proportionality test, such collection must be minimal and purpose-limited.
• Exclusion: verification gates can shut out children and parents without formal identity documents, deepening the digital divide.
• Child agency: UNICEF warns age bans alone will not keep children safe and may backfire, since platforms are how isolated children learn and express themselves [2].
• Displacement: gated children migrate to smaller, unregulated apps — the least supervised part of the internet [2].

Regulatory challenges

• Inconsistent thresholds: age limits differ across jurisdictions and across privacy, safety and consumer law, and are often not spelt out with specificity [3].
• Cross-border enforcement of services hosted abroad remains difficult [3].
• India's gap: the DPDP Act, 2023 treats anyone under 18 as a child and needs verifiable parental consent, forcing every fiduciary to verify all users' age — with adverse implications for online anonymity [5].
• Sequencing: Australia legislated a statutory under-16 minimum in 2024 [6] before age-assurance methods were proven.

How the KIDS Act shifts accountability

• Reverses the burden of proof: very large online platforms must show their services are safe and designed for children's wellbeing, rather than regulators proving harm [1].
• Graded access: no independent accounts under 13; parent-managed "mini accounts" at 13–14 capped at one hour daily; independence at 15+ [1].
• Design duties: bans infinite scrolling, gamified rewards and sleep-hour notifications; AI chatbots off by default [1].

Regulation is thus moving from policing users to auditing design. A workable model pairs a privacy-preserving, token-based age check with enforceable safety-by-design duties — protection that still respects children's rights under the UNCRC. India can close its verification gap the same way, regulating design as well as consent.