Amid wave of kids’ online safety laws, age-checking tech comes of age

For years, tech companies successfully resisted pressure from child safety advocates to do more to keep kids off their services, claiming technical limitations would make any attempt to restrict access for teens impractical, overly broad or a security risk.

Now, a growing ​list of governments is concluding those hurdles are not insurmountable, and pushing ahead with aggressive new age-checking requirements ​for social networks, AI chatbots and porn purveyors alike.