In the recent mid-term election in the United States, 25-year-old Maxwell Front won a congressional seat in Florida. Thus, he became the first Generation-Z member of the US Congress. Gen-Z refers to the generation born between 1997-2012. Across the world, this generation has emerged as a segment increasingly worthy of attention, especially now as its older members are entering the workforce. They will soon surplus millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) to become the most populous generation on earth.
Gen-Z is also called digital natives, as they are the first generation born into a time when digital technology existed. Most of them have not experienced a life without the internet. Growing up during an era of vast technological innovation and instant accessibility of information, Gen-Z remains sharply different than any previous generation. Digital affiliation is considered their most unique attribute, and that's also the way they prefer to influence the world.
While Gen-Z has easy access to an infinite scale of online content, that also raises a bigger question: What is the right content for them at the right time in their formative years? The internet is generally open to any content and unrestricted to mass and it is not a rare to see a toddler scrolling through a smartphone. However, just like food or formal education, it is essential to feed the right online stuff at the right time to kids and adolescents following their psychological and physical capabilities.
For example, popular social media platforms define a minimum age for their users. In most cases, it is 13 years, followed by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. For LinkedIn and WhatsApp, that becomes 14 and 16 years, respectively. However, all these platforms just ask users to input their age while first using their services, they do not ask to verify it. Though, there remain options to verify users' age in different ways.
In many countries, age verification of users has always been a mandatory legal procedure for delivering certain age-appropriate services and products, which are available only for adults, like tobacco, alcohol, gambling, etc. While purchasing these products online, users need to verify their age through digital mechanisms. A big addition to this list is online pornographic content. Recently an increasing under-18 digital population has heightened pressure from regulatory entities on service providers to implement more stringent age checking on adult sites so that children are kept safe online.
Several countries have already enforced age verification-related laws and regulations. Most of the members of the European Union have restrictions prohibiting access for under-aged people to gambling, tobacco, alcohol, etc. In 2017, the UK became the first country in the world to enforce a legal mandate on the internet age verification system. Canada is currently reviewing a bill in its parliament to enforce age verification in certain adult sites.
So, this context takes us to the question -- what are the available options for online age verification? They can be divided into three broad categories:
* Document-based verification: Users share the digital version of authorized identification documents (passports, health card, etc) which contain their date of birth
* Database-based verification: Users provide some identification number (credit card number or social insurance number), through which their ages get cross-checked with a corresponding database
* Biometrics-based verification: Users' ages are determined by analyzing their instant biometric input (fingerprint, facial scan, voice, etc)
Traditionally, document and database-based verification have been commonly used for age verification. However, those methods have certain risks regarding document forgery and the protection of users' privacy. Such risks enhanced further during the Covid-19 pandemic when online transactions increased exponentially. This sparked the need for secure and reliable mechanisms of age verification.
Estimating users' age anonymously from biometric data protects their privacy and data security, as it does not divulge any further information about them. The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence during the last decade has significantly enriched biometric technologies. In the context of Bangladesh, age verification was not that significant in the past. Because, unlike Western countries, certain age-specific stuff was banned in general here. Recently though, we have seen some updates in relevant laws. The increase in online transactions is another reality that needs to be considered here.
In February 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs in Bangladesh issued the Alcohol Control Rules 2022. For the first time, it included an age provision, setting 21 years as the minimum age for alcohol purchase and consumption. While the law contains details regarding documentary requirements for in-person alcohol purchases, it does not specifically mention the requirements during online purchases. From November 2018 to February 2019, access to nearly 20,000 porn and gambling websites were blocked under the supervision of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
However, are placing blocks enough to mitigate the damaging impact of such content, particularly on a tech-savvy generation like Gen-Z? Recent crime trends, especially violence against women and children, do not give a promising sign in that regard. A recent study by Action Aid Bangladesh reported that 63.51% of women in Bangladesh faced online harassment in 2022. While it is a broader problem, the widespread availability of indecent online content does remain one of the driving factors behind it.
Therefore, it appears essential to review age-based online policies from a holistic perspective (social, legal, and technological). Having technical readiness in that regard may help in other aspects as well.
It is worth mentioning that Bangladesh already has seen some success regarding age verification through ICT solutions. To prevent child marriage, a phone application called “game-changer” has been developed and tested jointly by A2I and Plan International. This app has an offline text messaging system specifically for rural areas, which gives the user access to a database that stores a unique identification number linked to three specific documents (birth certificate, school leaving document, NID card) in verifying any person's age before marriage.
It was not a choice made by the members of Gen-Z to be born and brought up in this digital era. Still, they are making the best out of it and can achieve further with proper guidance. So, it remains our responsibility, the earlier generations, to ensure that they are provided with the right digital content at the right age. Enabling online age verification for relevant scenarios can be a significant step in that regard.
Azfar Adib is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a doctoral candidate at Concordia University in Canada.
