When No ID Means No Internet: Age Verification and the Right to Access Information

This report, co-authored by Sheila B. Lalwani, a doctoral student and recent COMPASS Fellow hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), explores the implications of age verification laws on the right to access information. While these laws are often framed as a tradeoff between privacy and child safety, they overlook the fundamental issue of access for people who cannot verify their age at all.

Age-related restrictions are developing rapidly worldwide, with mandatory age assurance for social media access being implemented or proposed in various countries. For example, in late 2025, Australia became the first country to impose a minimum age requirement for prohibiting children under the age of 16 from creating or holding social media accounts.

India passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, which includes mandatory verifiable parental consent and ongoing discussions for social media restrictions. The United Kingdom passed the Online Safety Act, requiring age verification across a range of services hosting harmful content to users under 18. More than half of the U.S. states have enacted age verification laws, and an EU Commission's expert report recommends a ban on social media access for users under 13, along with mandatory age verification for platforms to ensure user appropriateness.

However, these age verification laws pose a significant problem: they exclude critical sections of the population that may not possess current passports, driver's licenses, credit cards, or similar documents proving their identity. Globally, millions of people lack government-issued identification or encounter regular challenges to obtaining or updating it.

In the U.S., roughly 15 million adult citizens lack a driver's license, and 2.6 million lack any government photo ID. Similar issues exist in the UK, where proof-of-age checks often rely on passports, driver's licenses, or other recognized alternatives, which can pose unique challenges to those without these documents.

The advocacy around age verification primarily focuses on privacy harms, but these measures also threaten equal access to information and the right to freedom of expression. As governments and companies increasingly require users to prove their age before accessing online services, individuals lacking identification risk being excluded from large parts of the internet, including essential information, community building, and public discourse.

This unequal access exacerbates existing inequalities, particularly for groups already marginalized offline, such as those in the global majority, women, and individuals with limited education or living in rural areas.

The exclusion of certain groups from the digital public sphere is particularly concerning. In many countries, millions of people do not have ID, with the majority residing in low and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Women are also disproportionately affected, with 8% fewer individuals having ID than men. Other vulnerable groups, such as adults below 25 years, those with a primary school education or less, and those in rural areas, are also less likely to have an ID.

Age verification laws may provide quick technological solutions but overlook longstanding structural challenges and undermine the universality of the internet. These laws depend on the collection of mass data, which human rights organizations, including EFF, have long opposed. For example, in Morocco, a push to restrict children's access to gaming platforms could pose challenges for those with IDs containing incomplete birth year information.

In Egypt, the lack of ID cards affects minority groups like the Baha'i and stateless individuals. The Rohingya, one of the world's largest populations of stateless people, often lack IDs, and Kuwait's Bidoon population also faces difficulties with proper identification materials.

In Nigeria, despite a national ID card program, only about 30% of the population has registered, leaving over 64 million people without identification. The Kafala system in several Middle Eastern countries, which ties migrant workers' legal residency and employment to a specific employer, also poses challenges for age verification laws. Stateless persons or migrant workers under this system may be vulnerable to forced labor and restricted movements.

In conclusion, age verification laws are less about confirming user age and more about creating structural barriers that disproportionately exclude certain groups, particularly those in the global majority. These laws fail to address the underlying structural challenges and instead harm the very individuals they intend to protect by undermining the universality of the internet and the right to access information freely.