Regulations are increasing: Facial recognition technology mandate is coming!

While social media offers many opportunities for children, it also brings many risks. For this reason, governments around the world are taking steps to ensure children's online safety.

Tech giants could face the threat of having millions of children's online accounts banned in line with new plans to be announced next spring by Ofcom, the online regulatory authority in the United Kingdom.

According to a report in The Telegraph, under the new practice planned to be announced in the UK next month, major social media companies will begin verifying the ages of minors using facial recognition technology.

Social media executives have been warned that they will face heavy fines and even prison sentences if they do not comply with the established guidelines to ensure their users are not minors.

John Higham, Ofcom's director of online safety policy, said they expect social media platforms to use "highly accurate and effective" AI age-verification systems to remove children's accounts.

"THEY ARE LYING ABOUT THEIR AGES"

Although popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have set a minimum age limit of 13, Ofcom estimates that 60 percent of children between the ages of eight and 11 have profiles on these platforms. It also stated that one-fifth of minors on social media sites created their profiles by hiding their ages.

John Higham expressed his security concerns by saying, “You don’t have to be a genius to understand that children will lie about their ages. This is a serious problem.”

HEAVY FINES AND PRISON

This development is supported by new rules published by Ofcom earlier this year.

In order to comply with the Online Safety Act, social media companies will be pressured to take stricter measures against illegal and harmful content.

According to the new rules that will come into effect in the spring, technology firms that fail to protect children from online harm could be fined up to 10 percent of their global turnover, and in cases of persistent violations, executives could be jailed.

Technology companies argue that in recent years they have introduced stricter age checks, such as scanning personal IDs, estimating facial age, and verifying age through parents.

However, Ofcom's research reported that most children were not asked to verify their ages, finding that only 18 percent of Instagram users, 19 percent of TikTok users, and 14 percent of Snapchat users were asked to verify their dates of birth.

News Source: 12punto