MyMahi criticizes Australian social media age law set to take effect Wednesday

New Zealand’s privacy regulator has already expressed reservations about Australia’s age assurance requirement for social media platforms, which comes into effect this week. But the privacy commissioner has also acknowledged that it will benefit from observing how things unfold for its neighbor.

Now, a private sector provider has weighed in, saying in a release that New Zealand has a “narrow window to avoid the problems already emerging” with what has come to be known as Australia’s social media ban for under-16s.

Jeff King is the CEO of MyMahi, a school software provider that uses authoritative data from New Zealand high schools to issue student digital IDs with selective disclosure capabilities. King believes Australia’s age assurance plan has gaps – specifically, for indigenous, disabled and low-income teens.

“Meta says Australian teens can verify their age with video-selfie technology – which the Age Assurance Trials showed was inaccurate – or by providing a government-issued photo ID like a passport or licence,” King says. “On paper, it sounds reasonable, but what happens if your family can’t afford a passport, or you’re not able to drive? Our poll of Kiwi students found 30 per cent don’t have a government ID.”

The Age Assurance Technology Trial’s final report on participating age estimation tools acknowledges that most age estimation technology underperformed at or near the so-called “buffer thresholds,” meaning they’re not great at determining if a person is 14 or 15, 15 or 16, and so on.

That said, biometrics firm Yoti, which provides Meta’s age assurance, is among the highest-ranked firms in the evaluation. Per the report, “automated lab testing showed high accuracy for Age Gates 13 and 16, with True Positive Rates consistently above 94 percent from age 13 upwards and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) values under 2 years for ages 13-20.” That qualifies Yoti’s facial age estimation for Technology Readiness Level 9, the trial’s highest.

MyMahi ‘highly reliable for enrolled New Zealand and Australian students’

Whether or not it’s inaccurate, then, is really a question of bias and privilege. King says “we know social media can be a lifeline for disabled, indigenous and low-income teens – connecting them with peers, support and opportunities. They shouldn’t be excluded because the government hasn’t provided an alternative way to prove who they are.”

The AATT acknowledges that “skin tone is a known source of bias in age estimation systems.” However, the trial found no “substantial difference” in using age assurance systems for First Nations and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

MyMahi, of course, has a horse in the race, in the form of its school system-connected model for kids to prove their age. The company works closely with the New Zealand Ministry of Education and Department of Internal Affairs to access official school records for privacy preserving age verification, and hopes to be part of the picture when New Zealand settles its stance on age checks for social media.

“We recently surveyed 500 users and found nearly half would prefer verifying their age this way instead of handing over photo ID,” he says of the system. If people can simply have a site ask their school for data, goes the logic, there’s no need to submit additional information.

UPDATE December 9, 2025 at 11:22am EST: The following section has been updated to reflect comments from MyMahi and the Age Assurance Technology Trial regarding MyMahi’s evaluation in the AATT.

The firm’s evaluation in the Age Assurance Technology Trial is demonstrative of how the evolving language of age assurance can lead to snags. Initially categorized as age inference, and evaluated as such in the published final report, the product was reclassified as an age verification tool. The AATT has issued an erratum, which notes that MyMahi “was included in the Age Inference volume of the published report, misunderstanding that their assessment of age is based on school year group. MyMahi verifies age from the date of birth held in school records.”

In this, MyMahi acts as a facilitator between school and relying party. Its reference point is Student Management System (SMS) records, which are based on original enrolment documents such as birth certificates. Because it sees an actual date of birth on which to base the yes/no decision it passes on, it qualifies as a verification system.

The company has since been assigned a TRL 9. In its evaluation, the trial notes that “school testing showed 100 percent accuracy across all age gates (13, 16, and 18) with no false positives or false negatives, though the small sample size limits broader statistical confidence.” It declares the system “highly reliable for enrolled New Zealand and Australian students” but says it is “not designed for public use.”

“Rated at TRL 9, MyMahi is considered ready for deployment within education environments, though its approach is not suited for non-student users and is only suitable for the student portion of mixed-audience platforms.”

In this, MyMahi’s focus points in practice to the often repeated dictum that there is no one silver bullet for age assurance, but rather a need for niche applications that speak to a specific local or regional use case. MyMahi may end up becoming the preferred way to do age checks on 13-18-year-olds in Oceania – and that may be all it needs to be to fulfill its mission.

Sky News keeps flogging false story about government ID

Not everyone, of course, thinks Australia’s plan is the right move. Coverage of the legislation in Sky News has been decidedly negative. Its most recent piece quotes Hassan Asghar, a senior lecturer in cryptography and cybersecurity at Macquarie University, who raises privacy concerns about a system that links social media to “real identity.”

“Australian minors will need to say farewell to the notion of anonymity and live in a world where their social media life is directly linked to their real identities.”

The statement raises a valid question about the categorization of companies under the law. Certain platforms, such as Reddit, have made anonymity a core feature. The same cannot be said for Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, which have generally encouraged users to share as much personal data as possible at every opportunity, and incubated the culture of the online influencer.

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, has promised to maintain a “dynamic list” of platforms that fall under the age assurance law. That means it could add services like large language model chatbots such as ChatGPT – but it also leaves room for platforms to be excluded as the regulation evolves.

All of that said, SkyNews’ angle is clear. This is not the first article to try and sell the erroneous idea that platforms in Australia have “shifted to” requiring users to submit government ID for age verification, nor the first one to lack evidence to back up the claim. And it even quotes King, who once again asserts that MyMahi’s system is the answer for kids aged 15-19.

Ban changes expectation that ‘everyone is on social media, so you have to be’

While there remains much ado about putting age assurance “in the hands of tech companies” and fear about data privacy, there is growing conviction among many academics that, whether or not Australia has nailed it, something needs to be done about social media.

A release from the University of Queensland quotes Associate Professor Michael Noetel of the School of Psychology, who says Australia’s prohibition “won’t be a silver bullet, but it is a step in the right direction.”

“The weight of evidence suggests that social media is bad for young people’s mental health. It’s not all bad for all teens; sometimes digital spaces are one of the few places we can feel seen and heard. Still overall, social media preys on our tendency to compare ourselves to others, leverages outrage to optimize engagement, and takes away from better ways young people could use their time. Some young people will find their ways around the ban, but a ban changes the expectation that ‘everyone is on social media, so you have to be too.’ It helps re-set the norms toward a healthier place, where digital is not the default.”

Some want a duty of care imposed on social media platforms; others want more parental engagement. Some think the ban will stop addictive algorithms from re-wiring kids’ brains; others worry about the disruption to critical support networks.

Australia’s eSafety Commission recently signed a joint pledge with the European Commission and Ofcom in the UK that will see them share knowledge on age assurance technologies. The conversation is now global; the ball is rolling, and picking up steam. On Wednesday in Australia, it will shoot off a cliff into the unknown, and the world will watch to see if it can hold together.

Article Topics

Age Assurance Technology Trial  |  age verification  |  Australia age verification  |  AVPA  |  biometric age estimation  |  biometric bias  |  biometrics  |  MyMahi  |  New Zealand  |  social media