Age Verification: Mexico Gives Apps 30 Days to Check Kids

Mexico just told apps like TikTok and Roblox they have thirty days to check how old their young users really are. And if they don't, nothing happens. At least not yet. There's no fine in the order. It also doesn't say how the apps should check. So why does that matter if you're not in Mexico? Because if your kid has ever typed in a fake birthday to get onto an app, this story is about you. And if you're an adult, you may soon be asked to prove your age with a selfie or an I.D. President Claudia Sheinbaum signed the order. It tells platforms to use reliable ways to confirm age, not just a box where someone types a birth date. Sheinbaum says laws with real penalties could follow if companies don't comply. So the real question is this. Does checking age actually protect kids, or does it just collect more data about everyone? Start with what the order asks for. Platforms have to name a contact person who's available all day, every day, for prosecutors and courts. They also have to keep digital evidence for at least ninety business days. That's a paper trail, built on purpose. For investigators, it means accounts involving minors may leave behind records that didn't exist before. For the rest of us, it means the app on your kid's phone is becoming a place where identity records get stored. Now, how do you actually check an age? The order doesn't say. But the menu is long. Apps can scan a photo I.D. They can use facial age estimation, where software looks at a selfie and guesses how old you are. They can check with a bank, a phone carrier, a credit card, or a digital identity wallet. Regulators in the U.K., Ofcom and the I.C.O., said together in March of this year that simply asking someone their age isn't effective anymore. In the U.S., twenty-six states have already passed age-verification laws aimed at keeping minors away from harmful content. So Mexico isn't alone. It's joining a wave. But do the checks work? A recent research paper looked at how children see these systems. The kids understood them well enough to beat them. They described the checks as matching what someone wrote, with no proof behind it. That includes the selfie-based age guessing. And the article notes there's very little objective data on how well any of these methods perform. So when a platform says a user was age verified, that could mean a solid document check. Or it could mean a legal checkbox. An investigator has to ask which one. A parent should ask too, because that label may not mean what it sounds like. Then there's what happens after the rules land. When Australia's social media ban for kids took effect, kids rushed to apps the law didn't cover. Many of those apps have fewer safety tools and fewer parental controls. In the U.K. and the U.S., searches and downloads of V.P.N.s often spike when age checks begin. A V.P.N. is a tool that hides where you're connecting from. Critics say that's the pattern. The problem doesn't disappear. It moves.