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Age Verification Is Building the Internet’s Next Identity Layer

Age-verification laws are multiplying across the democratic world, but they’re splintering into incompatible, competing systems. How governments resolve that fragmentation will shape the internet for people logging in today, and will set the template for how billions of A.I. agents identify themselves tomorrow. 

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Soon, watching a show, reading the news or leaving a comment online may require proving your age by uploading a government ID or allowing a camera to scan your face. Not once, but across countless websites, each potentially retaining its own copy of your credentials. That is the future that many democratic governments are steadily legislating into existence. We are sleepwalking toward the most invasive version of it, without noticing that there was ever a choice. The debate has largely focused on protecting children. Much less attention has been paid to the digital identity infrastructure those protections require. 

The machinery is already in motion. This summer, two of the most consequential internet bills advanced within days of each other. On June 29, the U.S. House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, a package built around a revised Kids Online Safety Act, with bipartisan support. The same week, E.U. negotiators held what was billed as the final trilogue on Chat Control 2.0, the bloc’s long-running child-protection regulation. Both had spent months under fire; both retreated on their most-contested measures. Yet both kept........

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