A New Zealand parliamentary committee has concluded that social media platforms should be off-limits to anyone under 16, recommending a system of age assurance that would reshape how young New Zealanders access the internet.
The recommendation is one of 12 in a 46-page report from the Education and Workforce Committee, which examined online “harms” ranging from algorithmic manipulation to deepfake pornography. The committee’s bottom line: “harm to young New Zealanders from online platforms is severe and requires urgent responses from Government, business, and society alike.”
What the report doesn’t settle is how age checks would actually work, and how the infrastructure needed to run them would create new problems while solving old ones.
The full list of recommendations covers a lot of ground. The committee wants a new independent online safety regulator, stronger liability for platforms that host “harmful” content, and mandatory algorithmic transparency.
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It wants bans on so-called “nudification” apps and the creation or distribution of non-consensual deepfake pornography. Alcohol, tobacco, and gambling advertising online should face tighter restrictions. Education campaigns targeting parents and young people are also on the list. The government’s response is due by June 3.
Not everyone on the committee agreed.
ACT New Zealand, a junior coalition partner, opposed several of the core recommendations: the new regulator, the deepfake bans, regulation of algorithmic recommendation systems, and the push for algorithmic transparency. Both ACT and the Green Party broke from the majority on the age restriction specifically.
ACT warned against responses “requiring the likes of digital ID for age verification,” framing the choice as identity documents or nothing. The Green Party’s objection ran along similar lines.
The committee’s own report acknowledges that age assurance doesn’t have to mean identity verification. Biometric facial age estimation, which estimates a person’s age from a selfie without storing or linking identity data, is referenced as an alternative. But, we all know how age verification tools that are supposed to delete data after it’s processed, have actually stored that data for longer than they declared. Also, data can be intercepted and stolen before deletion.
New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner has already flagged skepticism about Australia’s age assurance approach, which the committee held up as a model alongside efforts in the EU and UK.
Aligning with those frameworks makes political sense. It doesn’t automatically make them proportionate.
The report names several unresolved problems. VPNs can circumvent local restrictions, and the committee punted that issue back to the government for further consideration. Defining which platforms count as social media, and distinguishing them from “appropriately moderated forums,” remains a genuine challenge without a clear answer.
Age assurance becomes identity surveillance by another name.
