You know that pop-up. The one you click “yes” for every time. The one that asks you to confirm you’re over 18. Sometimes, “you must be older than 21 to enter this site” is written in big, bold letters. Other times, in a somewhat sobering moment, you’re asked to scroll back for what seems like eons as you find the year of your birth. Maybe you put your real age; maybe you’re lying and claim to be younger than you are (who’s going to check, this silly little website?); maybe you are underage and want to access whatever’s behind this simple-to-circumvent pop-up. Either way, you’re getting through it, and easily at that.
The political consensus around protecting kids online is nearly universal. What Americans can’t agree on is whether the tools legislators have built actually do the job. A new survey from digital safety platform All About Cookies, conducted in February with responses from 1,000 U.S. adults, reveals a striking paradox: overwhelming public support for age verification laws, paired with near-universal consensus that those laws simply won’t work.
“A lot of kids, especially teens, are probably more tech savvy, better than even some of these adults,” Josh Koebert, a data journalist for All About Cookies, told Fortune. “So if I can get around it, they can get around it.”
Adults want adults on the internet—or at least want kids to out themselves
Seventy-nine percent of Americans support age verification laws for adult content, and 74% back them for social media platforms. Yet 85%, the highest consensus figure in the entire survey, say the current laws are too easy to skirt. More than half of users who have been asked to verify their age online admitted they found a workaround anyway, most commonly by switching to a less-regulated website (45%) or using a VPN (22%).
“The main takeaway is twofold,” said Koebert, who authored the survey. “The majority of people think kids need to be protected, but what we’ve got isn’t working.”
The more revealing story for business leaders may be the data anxieties the survey surfaces. Ninety-two percent of respondents expressed at least one concern about age verification laws, and the fears center squarely on corporate data stewardship.
Seventy-nine percent worry about privacy and data security; 66% cite identity theft risk; and 41% fear being profiled or added to an external list after verification is complete.
Those fears aren’t theoretical. Many age verification laws include provisions requiring companies to delete user data once verification is complete. But high-profile breaches, including incidents involving Discord’s third-party verification vendor Persona, have eroded confidence that the rules are being followed.
“People have been bitten time and time again,” Koebert said. “They’ve submitted information to a giant company and ended up in a breach. Of course they’re going to be hesitant to submit a government ID.”
The survey also identified an unlikely policy pressure point: sports betting. Ninety percent of respondents said gambling platforms should face strict age verification, the highest figure of any category tested, topping even social media.
Koebert attributed it to market saturation. Since the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling that opened the door to federally legal sports wagering, betting brands have flooded broadcasts with advertising.
“It’s impossible to watch sports without being bombarded,” he said. “Kids are watching these games alongside their parents, and people are thinking: this isn’t healthy.”
Despite widespread support for regulation, the public’s preferred solution skews away from top-down mandates. Fifty-five percent said parental controls and monitoring tools, and not government laws, are the best way to keep minors safe online, while only one in five chose age verification laws as the optimal approach.
As verification requirements expand to cover roughly half of U.S. states, and as countries from Australia to Spain enact their own versions, the core challenge for lawmakers and platforms is converging: how to protect minors online without creating the very privacy vulnerabilities that make adults distrust the internet in the first place.
“Where does it stop? Where does it keep going? What happens next?” Koebert asked regarding how far reaching the laws can get. “Questions that I don’t think we have answers for.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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