In October 2000, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) Commission issued its report declaring that there was no single technological solution to the protection of minors online. Having served on that Commission, I remember well the many hours we spent testing and evaluating numerous age verification methods - from credit cards to government-issued IDs - as a means to better keep kids away from harmful content. More work was needed by industry, we concluded.
Fast forward 25 years and we’re still working on it. But unlike the state of technology at the turn of the century, we are getting tantalizingly close to a solution or set of technological means to accurately verify an adult’s or minor’s age without jeopardizing their personal information. Effective age assurance, which is privacy preserving, has been the Holy Grail of the online safety community for three decades.
As recently as November 2022, we issued a research report outlining parents’ and teens’ attitudes and experiences with various age assurance methods. We found a majority of parents open to the idea of biometrics (such as facial age estimation) being used as a part of an age verification process. And a year later, in a FOSI white paper, we laid out the principles of proportionality: developing tools based on the level of risk of a site, app or service. We also outlined the inherent tensions between effectiveness and intrusiveness, between safety and privacy.
So here we are in 2025 and there are now numerous regulations, laws and proposed legislation at the state, federal and international levels all demanding the sites, apps, operating systems and devices all provide and enforce age assurance methods to keep kids from adult material and, in some cases, from adults themselves. Meta has mounted a large-scale media and lobbying campaign to persuade legislators that age verification should take place at the app store level, although there are many issues with that approach as well.
In the meantime, Google and Apple have both offered tech solutions to counter Meta’s push. Third party vendors such as Private Identity, k-ID and Yoti have stepped up their efforts to provide safe, secure and private verification tools that have the potential to be a part of a larger, industry-wide effort to finally reach a consensus on the best way to provide age assurance that will satisfy not only legislators, but also parents and the kids themselves.
I am hopeful that, this year, we will see a major coming together of industry players and lawmakers to finally agree upon a set of solutions that will bring us all - kids and adults, alike - to more private, more secure and most importantly, a safer means of accessing apps, games, websites and platforms.
For the past 30 years, Stephen Balkam has had a wide range of leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in both the US and UK. He is currently the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. FOSI’s mission is to make the online world safer for kids and their families. FOSI convenes the top thinkers and practitioners in government, industry and the nonprofit sectors to collaborate and innovate and to create a “culture of responsibility” in the online world.
Prior to FOSI, Stephen was the Founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) and led a team which developed the world’s leading content labeling system on the web. While with ICRA, Stephen served on the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) in 2000 and was named one of the Top 50 UK Movers and Shakers, Internet Magazine, 2001.
In 1994, Stephen was named the first Executive Director of the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) which created a unique self-labeling system for computer games and then, in 1996, Stephen launched RSACi – a forerunner to the ICRA website labeling system. For his efforts in online safety, Stephen was given the 1998 Carl Bertelsmann Prize in Gutersloh, Germany, for innovation and responsibility in the Information Society and was invited to the first and subsequent White House Internet Summits during the Clinton Administration.
Stephen’s other positions include the Executive Director of the National Stepfamily Association (UK); General Secretary of the Islington Voluntary Action Council; Executive Director of Camden Community Transport as well as management positions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Inter-Action. Stephen’s first job was with Burroughs Machines (now Unisys) and he had a spell working for West Nally Ltd – a sports sponsorship PR company.
Stephen received a BA, magna cum laude, in Psychology from University College, Cardiff, Wales in 1977. A native of Washington, DC, Stephen spent many years in the UK and is now has dual citizenship. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post, appears often on TV and has appeared on nationally syndicated TV and radio programs such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC and has been interviewed by leading newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, radio and in the mainstream press. He has given presentations and spoken in 15 countries on 4 continents.
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