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 input collection practices While safety remains paramount proposed solutions require careful review to prevent new vulnerabilities or major technical and safeguard 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 defense protocols and creating unclear lines of accountability particularly concerning when dealing with children s facts 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 figures at the app store level would make personal information potentially accessible across all downloaded applications vastly increasing the peril of content breaches and misuse Selected of the advocacy for this approach that is backed by the social media industry seems driven more by operational convenience than by thorough guard considerations This could impact in the function being abused by bad actors to steal and abuse our kids input at a time when evidence 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 safeguard requirements Instead Minnesota legislators must pursue comprehensive verification methodologies that simultaneously strengthen both child protection mechanisms and personal figures safety 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