Minors Protection Online Requires More Than Verification
Age verification alone cannot protect minors online. In its GDC26 submission, DIDAS calls for privacy-preserving verification, stronger platform accountability and interoperable governance to develop together.
How can we protect minors online without creating new surveillance infrastructure?
This question is at the centre of a new DIDAS position paper submitted to the Global Digital Collaboration Conference 2026 (GDC26) in Geneva.
The paper, “Minors Protection Online Requires More Than Verification”, argues that two policy questions are too often treated as one: who should be allowed to access a service, and what responsibilities platforms have towards the people already using it.
Age verification can help answer the first question. It does not solve harmful content, addictive product design, behavioural profiling or the commercial exploitation of minors. These challenges require platform and product regulation alongside any verification mechanism.
Where age verification is genuinely necessary, DIDAS advocates a privacy-preserving approach based on several non-negotiable principles: privacy by design and by default, unlinkability, data minimisation, open-source auditability and decentralisation. Verification should disclose only what is necessary—for example, whether a person is above or below a defined age threshold—without revealing their identity.
The Swiss e-ID and the emerging swiyu trust infrastructure demonstrate how selective disclosure and modern credential technologies can contribute to such an approach. But technology alone is not sufficient. Governance, international interoperability, accessibility and clear responsibilities for issuers and verifiers must evolve alongside the technical standards.
For this reason, DIDAS calls for Switzerland to actively contribute to the emerging international framework for privacy-preserving age assurance and attribute verification.
GDC26 and its Age Assurance Task Force provide an important forum to continue this work across jurisdictions, standards communities, governments, civil society and industry. The paper identifies the Task Force in particular as a natural forum for advancing privacy-preserving age assurance and interoperable guardianship approaches.
Download the full DIDAS GDC26 submission:
Minors Protection Online Requires More Than Verification
DIDAS Position Paper | August 2026 | Submitted to GDC26, Geneva, 1–3 September 2026
