Age Assurance as a spectrum: A risk-based approach from a European perspective

To safeguard children’s rights online, digital services must either be safe for all ages or recognise when their users are children and respond accordingly. Too often, children are left exposed to harmful features, excessive data collection and design choices that prioritise commercial interests over their rights.

5Rights’ Age Assurance as a Spectrum report sets out how age assurance can support a safe-by-design, children’s rights approach – not as a tool for exclusion, but as a means of enabling age-appropriate services, safer defaults and proportionate protections.

Utilising European and international legal frameworks such as the GDPR, AVMSD, and DSA, it makes clear that age assurance should be risk-based, privacy-preserving and calibrated to the harms a service or feature poses.

Used well, age assurance can help deliver a digital environment that is not merely safer for children, but genuinely designed with their rights and best interests at its core.