TikTok set to toughen age checks in Europe under growing regulatory pressure

ByteDance-owned TikTok will introduce new technology for age checks in Europe on the back of rising concerns from regulators about children using social media platforms. The video-sharing app says it will soon introduce the technology to ensure users under the age of 13 are identified more accurately and removed where necessary.

During the next months, TikTok will launch its age verification solution in stages, following a year-long testing phase in Europe, as reported by the company to Reuters.

Rather than trusting users to give authentic birth dates, TikTok’s algorithm relies on examining details of users’ profiles, videos that have been posted, and how the user interacts with TikTok, which helps it detect potential child user accounts.

Any flagged account will be evaluated by trained moderators before any subsequent actions are taken.

Regulators push platforms like TikTok to act

TikTok stated that the company is steadily trying to balance the effort of protecting children with protecting privacy, but that internationally, no consensus exists about how best to establish someone’s age while maintaining privacy.

As regulators in Europe are increasingly looking at how social media platforms verify ages, they are concerned that current verification processes are either insufficient to adequately protect children or too invasive of the users’ private information.

The question is now being debated among the nations of the world. Australia has announced that children under the age of 16 will no longer be allowed to have any form of access to social media, and there are ongoing discussions in the European Parliament regarding additional age verification requirements.

Denmark has also proposed introducing legislation prohibiting access to social media for all minors aged 15 or younger. In Britain, TikTok’s earlier pilot reportedly led to the removal of thousands of accounts linked to children under 13.

In order to ensure compliance with European law and work with the Irish Data Protection Commission, TikTok will introduce an appeal process for users who have been suspended or banned from their platform, in which they will be able to use age-checking services offered by Yoti.

These will be based on facial age estimation, official identification, and/or verification of the user’s age via credit card. Meta (owner of both Facebook and Instagram) has already established similar verification tools through their partnership with Yoti.

Ireland scrutiny highlights wider risks

As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, a separate report details that Ireland has become a major provider of digital regulations across Europe. The Coimisiún na Meán (Irish Media Regulator) is currently investigating TikTok and LinkedIn under the Digital Services Act (EU).

The scope of this investigation is to determine whether each of these companies has provided its users enough information regarding how to safely and easily report illegal content on their platforms.

Ireland’s move to enforce digital legislation against TikTok and LinkedIn came after France fined TikTok €530 million in 2025 for violating the GDPR and €310 million for the breach against LinkedIn. The Coimisiún na Meán is also investigating Elon Musk and Twitter for their potential violations.

TikTok announced that as it implements its new method of identifying users’ ages, those in Europe will be notified of their implementation.

They stated that their ultimate goal of providing this service is to provide protection for minor users, while at the same time, protect users’ privacy and not use extensive means of providing proof of identity.

On the other hand, the regulatory bodies state that stronger identity verification systems are necessary as more and more social media becomes integrated into the daily lives of minors.

Additionally, EU regulators have made it clear that by using automated methods of monitoring and moderating content, companies will be required to inform users of how those automated methods work and how effective they are.

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