Just last week, Instagram announced new features and privacy settings to help parents better protect their teens on its platform. Child development experts, teen safety advocates, and the media lauded the announcement. I too commend Instagram for doing the right thing.
But the truth is parents don’t need more safety settings: Only 39% say they use them. What parents really need is an effective and accurate age-verification system to keep their kids from lying about their ages to access the darker corners of the Internet.
We all know the current state of affairs. Forty-six percent of teenagers say they are online “almost constantly,” leaving them exposed to inappropriate and even potentially harmful content without effective protections. More than half report first seeing online porn by age 13. This is unacceptable.
Parents like me are forced into a binary choice: We either do not give our kids a smartphone, preventing them from having valuable online experiences—or we give in, embarking on a mostly futile attempt to control what they see and do.
For the last two years, as CEO of Pinterest, I’ve been working to address these issues and bring companies together to make the Internet safer and healthier for everyone. For example, in 2023, we made Pinterest accounts private-only for teens under 16, meaning they can’t make their accounts public, even with parental consent. We did this because we don’t believe it’s safe for young users to be discovered by strangers on the Internet under any circumstances.
However, our efforts and those of other apps are undermined by the fact that children and teens lie about their age to get access to what they want online. This doesn’t have to be the case. We need the industry and policymakers to address the elephant in the room: the barely-there age verification system that currently plagues our industry.
We already have successful examples where government action, combined with industry action, makes people safer. Take, for instance, buying alcohol. The government issues IDs and sets age requirements, while bars and liquor stores check IDs to ensure that purchasers are over 21. When it comes to driving, you don’t expect car manufacturers to issue driver’s licenses; that’s the government’s job. But you do expect auto companies to ensure seatbelts and airbags are in every car.
In both these examples, government and private enterprises each did their part through workable solutions underpinned by thoughtful regulation. Yet online, we’re stuck in an endless loop of finger-pointing: The government blames tech companies, tech companies blame each other, and some even blame parents.
Meanwhile, our children are handed the steering wheel without much thought, leaving them exposed to harmful content as they roam the Internet without seatbelts. Tech companies and the government need to stop finger-pointing and instead work together to protect young people online.
How would it work? Right now, parents and caregivers already input birthdates when they purchase a phone and set up their teen’s account through the operating system (OS). However, despite having the most accurate information about a user’s age, the OS providers don’t currently share this information with apps like Pinterest and Instagram.
At the same time, these OS providers are piloting new digital IDs with states like California. Through these digital IDs, they are securely and privately sharing basic information about a phone’s user with select businesses—including whether someone is above or below 18. So, what we need nationally is already beginning to happen locally.
We can make the phone a one-stop shop for age verification. Apps are downloaded through the OS and this, far and away, is the most straightforward solution. As somebody who built and led some of the most popular mobile wallets in the world (including Google Wallet, PayPal, and Venmo), I know this is how we can best ensure teens only access age-appropriate content and apps.
To make this a reality, Congress must make digital IDs the national standard and require OS platforms to send age-validation information to apps. This arms apps with the data they need to parse content by age group. Congress must also establish safeguards to protect user privacy and ensure equitable access. Multiple states and other countries already issue digital IDs while being mindful of privacy, security, and access concerns.
Online age verification is not a silver bullet. We must all continue to take more responsibility in doing our part to safeguard young people. Tech companies should be competing on safety and mental well-being, not patting ourselves on the back for doing the bare minimum.
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The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
