Relying parties in the spotlight at 2026 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit

Where are we at with age assurance? This is the first question posed at the 2026 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit, taking place this week in Manchester. It is representative of the conference’s focus in this, its third year. Much has changed since the 2025 event, most notably the publication of the first ISO/IEC standard for age assurance systems, 27566-1. The standard will be essential in laying the groundwork for a stable industry. But in the meantime, many relying parties are still figuring out how to navigate the sector, and how best to implement privacy-preserving age assurance.

To this end, the organizers have put the focus this year on relying parties. Attendees at the first session, a debate on the progress and status of age assurance, included representatives from tobacco company Phillip Morris International, social media platform TikTok and Epic Games. Discussion moved from broad issues of trust to how to differentiate use cases to the role of governments in laying down the rules.

Rob Koltarz, CEO of OneID, spoke from the provider’s perspective, arguing that the secret sauce for trusted age assurance is robust trust frameworks. While he held up the UK’s Digital Verification Services trust framework as an example, he also noted that it focuses on digital identity – but does not lay out the rules for age checks. Without trust frameworks in place to define what various jurisdictions allow or do not allow with regard to age and age checking technology, the inevitable result is a fractured ecosystem. In short, Koltarz says, “governments aren’t doing their job.”

Iain Corby of the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) presented a keynote on a hot topic: on whose shoulders should liability rest? The subject is likely to resurface when Meta takes the stage to outline its stance on age assurance – which, broadly, is that app stores or operating systems should be liable. AVPA disagrees; Corby refers to the health and safety proximity principle, which says that a warning should be placed as close to the threat or hazard as possible. In the case of age assurance, that means platforms or websites.

Meta, social media present unique challenge for age checks 

Meta, the Silicon Valley giant that owns Instagram and Facebook, has a large footprint at this year’s summit. The company sponsored the event this year and is hosting several talks and panels, demonstrating a new investment in the question of how to comply with age assurance legislation.

In part, this is out of necessity; it is increasingly clear that age assurance for social media is a different beast than age checks for most age restricted material. Tobacco, pornography and gambling do not (any longer) tend to lean on the idea that they are beneficial for humankind. Social media, on the other hand, has advertised itself as a net social good from the get-go. Recall Facebook’s mission statement from the early 2000s: “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” The company’s legal lobby, NetChoice, has lately taken to comparing social media platforms to libraries, as an argument against requiring them to do age checks. This, despite a recent verdict from a California court that Meta and Google are liable for damage caused by their platforms, which are designed to be addictive. In the U.S., in particular, the First Amendment weighs heavily on the debate.

That said, according to the AVPA’s Corby, Washington, DC’s attitude toward age assurance legislation has shifted of late, with lawmakers abandoning the heated rhetoric framing it as an attempt to strangle U.S. companies in favor of a more measured approach that takes into account the various pieces of legislation developing at the state level.

Brazil’s Digital ECA draws on learnings from 2025 summit

The practical value of the Global Age Assurance Standards Summit summit was also in evidence on day one, with a representative from Brazil’s Ministry of Justice crediting the 2025 edition in Amsterdam as a key motivator for the development and publication of its Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA). Brazil has moved at a brisk pace in actualizing its legislation laying out principles for the adoption of age assurance mechanisms.

Ricardo Horta, director of digital safety and risk prevention at the Ministry of Justice, said in his remarks that the speed was driven in part by urgency, noting that Brazil never used to have school violence – a problem that is now severe, as “young people are being radicalized on social media.” Public opinion, according to Horta, is largely in alignment with the regulatory push.

However, those looking for a simple, harmonized approach to global age assurance are unlikely to find it. With regulatory regimes still working on sharing knowledge, privacy concerns remaining front and center and policy lagging behind innovation, it has never been clearer that age assurance is not a simple question of asking how old someone is, and that a complex ecosystem is developing to work out how to establish a lasting and foundational trust in the industry and its goals.

Article Topics

age assurance standard  |  Age Assurance Standards Summit (2026)  |  Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS)  |  age verification  |  AVPA  |  digital identity  |  social media