A plan to verify the ages of children who use social media, as part of a wider plan to set a digital age of consent, will be considered shortly by Government.
Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan is to bring a memo to Cabinet which will propose linking a child’s age with their online MyGovID account as part of a plan to increase protection for children online.
It comes as Instagram and Facebook have started shutting down social media accounts of children in Australia believed to be under the age of 16, as the first age-based social media ban in the world comes into effect.
On December 10th, Australia will become the first country in the world to impose a strict social media ban for children under the age of 16. Mr O’Donovan’s department recently hosted a meeting with representatives of the Australian government to discuss similar measures for Ireland.
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Government is planning to make online child safety a key theme of Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union in the latter half of 2026. While Government believes online child protection would be more effective when decided at a European level, it is also trying to bring forward its own domestic legislation to protect children on social media.
While the Australian government places the responsibility for verifying users’ ages on platforms like Meta and YouTube, Ireland is planning on creating an online wallet as a practical, technical solution to verify the age of social media users.
Coimisiún na Meán, the media regulator, would be responsible for deciding when and how a social media platform should use age verification.
It is understood Mr O’Donovan’s department has been working with the Department of Public Expenditure and the Department of Social Protection to introduce an online age verification tool which would be linked to the existing MyGovID, the online identity platform that is used to access social welfare payments.
The office of the Government’s Chief Information Officer, which is based in the Department of Public Expenditure, has been designing the digital wallet based on MyGovID which would be compatible with online age verification. Officials in both the Department of Media and the Department of Public Expenditure recently met to discuss bringing forward the proposal.
The Government has already been discussing the use of the new wallet with tech companies like Google and Apple and it is expected the wallet will be tested under a pilot scheme. Data protection concerns and the views of children themselves will also be considered.
Like all EU member states, Ireland is regulated by the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) which requires online platforms accessible to children to put in place “appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors” on the platforms. The same regulation says that platforms will not be required “to process additional personal data to assess whether the recipient of the service is a minor”.
Under the DSA, member states like Ireland are required to help create consistent rules for online moderation and the digital market across Europe, meaning that one country should not have a different social media policy to the rest of the EU.
There is still a debate within the EU about what the digital age of consent should be, and whether a social media age limit should be set by governments or by a child’s parents.
