Larry Magid: Can age assurance make social media and AI safer for kids?

In 2011, danah boyd, then a researcher at Microsoft, reported that millions of children under 13 were on Facebook, despite the service s minimum age requirement of 13. She also found that many parents knew their children were using Facebook and that some actively helped them misrepresent their ages. Related Articles Magid: Should your AI chatbot know everything about you? Fitbit Edge offers smartwatch features without the bulk Magid: From insurance to elections, how scammers exploit current events I upgraded to the iPhone 18 Pro Max. But maybe you shouldn t Magid: Better dictation for iPhone and Android Fifteen years later, age restrictions are still being widely circumvented. According to a Common Sense Media survey released in October 2026, half of American children ages 9 to 12 used social media on a given day, spending a median of an hour and 2