EU to unveil age-verification app in July to protect kids online

Aiming to strengthen the protection of underage web users, the European Union is launching a new age-verification app in July.

According to European officials, the upcoming tool is designed to enable users to confirm their age without disclosing too much sensitive personal information to online platforms.

The step is seen as signaling the EU’s intent to improve enforcement around child safety in the digital space. At the same time, the app is probably just a stepping stone towards the arrival of the European digital identity wallet in 2026.

Brussels is hoping that the centralized wallet will enable secure access to all digital services and become a pivotal mechanism for regulating online content providers. Until then, the age-verification app will have to do.

Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s tech policy chief, urged tech companies and platforms to adopt age verification themselves to manage the risks rather than wait for governments to enforce it.

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“The protection of minors is a very important priority for us, and we will take more action here,” she told the Financial Times.

Besides, according to Virkkunen, websites designed to have children scroll for hours on end should create private accounts by default for children. That way, it’d be harder for strangers to contact minors.

Some EU member states are advocating for a bloc-wide minimum age to access social media.

The project, by the way, has already started, with technical specifications, source code, and a beta release of the solution published online.

Separately, some EU member states are advocating for a bloc-wide minimum age to access social media. Politico said last week Greece, France, and Spain are spearheading the proposal to stop kids from using social media.

EU member states are following the lead of Australia, which moved to set a minimum age of 16 for signing up to accounts with certain social media platforms as of later this year.

Polling data suits the initiators of the change. Despite protests by big tech firms, a YouGov survey released in Australia showed that 77% of Australians backed the ban.