On the Internet Nobody Knows You’re a Kid – Yet
Lawmakers are pushing tech companies to make the web safer for children. But their proposals won’t do much without strict standards for age verification.
Few safeguards for kids.
Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Peter Steiner’s famous New Yorker cartoon about online anonymity — that on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog — becomes devastating in the context of digital inscrutability for kids. When nobody knows who is under 13, tweens can compare themselves with thinfluencers on Instagram, 5-year-olds can broadcast to hundreds of adults on streaming platforms and children can wander into a strip club in the metaverse, according to a grim BBC News investigation published Wednesday. Most popular social media companies including ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram have an age minimum of 13, but none of them do much to keep kids off their systems beyond asking for a date of birth.
That’s why it’s encouraging to see an array of new children’s codes proposed by legislators across Europe, Australia and last week in the U.S., aimed at making the internet safer for kids. If they work, apps will be forced to offer alternative versions for children.1