EU Member States Push European Commission to Mandate Digital ID Age Verification For Social Media

Efforts to impose strict age checks on social media are intensifying across Europe. A coalition of EU governments is now pushing for mandatory age verification rules that could force millions of people to link their internet use to real-world ID systems, raising serious concerns for privacy advocates.

Eleven EU member states are pressing the European Commission to rewrite its guidance under the Digital Services Act to mandate age checks for social media platforms.

The countries backing this push include France, Ireland, Greece, and Austria, many of which have already launched national initiatives to regulate youth access to digital services. But what’s being sold as a child-protection measure is, in practice, a significant expansion of digital identity demands.

In a letter submitted to the Commission, the governments argue that social media presents enough risk to warrant compulsory age verification. “The well-documented presence of minors on social networks should be considered a sufficiently high-risk factor to require age verification as the only method of age assurance,” the statement reads.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

This framing implicitly excludes more privacy-conscious approaches and advances a model where online access is conditional on real-world identification.

Several of the letter’s signatories have already moved in this direction.

The European Commission’s draft guidelines, released in May, stop short of requiring hard ID for social media.

nstead, they classify these platforms as lower risk compared to pornographic or gambling websites and permit the use of facial age estimation technologies.

That risk-based model has sparked pushback, not just from member states seeking stronger controls, but from those concerned that privacy-preserving alternatives are being marginalized.

Privacy defenders are asking what happens when those “clear guidelines” become the basis for turning everyday online interaction into an identity-verified activity.

And many in the age verification industry itself are raising alarms; not because they oppose regulation, but because the current policy approach risks entrenching only one type of solution: real-ID checks.

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