Some smartphones are now demanding you prove your age

Age verification online has been a hot topic over the last year or so. You may have already run into it on YouTube, and other platforms like ChatGPT and Discord are also starting to introduce verifications. But so far, those checks have been limited to individual apps or services. That might be starting to change, as age checks are beginning to appear on users’ devices.

As Ars Technica reports, Apple has begun rolling out a new age verification system tied to iOS in the UK. After installing the latest update, iPhone owners there may be asked to confirm they’re over 18 to access certain services. Failure to do so prevents the user from downloading certain adult-rated apps on the App Store, but it doesn’t end there. You could also reportedly face limits on web browsing, along with stricter “communication safety” checks in Messages and FaceTime that are designed to detect nude images and videos. Apple’s support pages suggest that failing to verify your age may restrict access to certain services or features altogether, though the company hasn’t specified which are affected.

To confirm your age, Apple offers several options, including checking a credit card on file, scanning a government ID like a passport or driver’s license, or using signals like how long your account has been active.

Some of this might sound familiar if you’ve been following recent policy discussions in the US. Lawmakers in states like California and Colorado have been exploring rules that would push age verification down to the operating system level, creating a kind of shared “age signal” that apps can rely on instead of running their own checks. Essentially, your phone could end up acting as the gatekeeper, deciding what you can and can’t access based on your verified status.

As you might imagine, some people are already uneasy about Apple’s move. In a Reddit thread discussing the update, multiple users pushed back on the idea of device-level age checks, raising privacy concerns and questioning why they should have to hand over personal data just to access features they already use.

Apple hasn’t specified exactly how far these restrictions extend, but the company wasn’t compelled to introduce age checks on iOS under UK law. For critics of such checks, this raises the possibility that the UK could serve as a testing ground for OS-level verification, following the broader shift towards such checks across individual services.