CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Age Checks Online

NARRATOR: Ask almost any parent whether children belong on social media, and you are likely to get a weary sigh. Most platforms already set a minimum age, but checking it usually amounts to little more than a box asking users to confirm their birthday, a hurdle any ten-year-old can clear in seconds. A growing chorus now wants companies to be legally required to verify how old their users really are. It sounds like common sense. Whether it would work as intended is another matter.

NARRATOR: Clinical psychologist Hannah Mercer, who has counselled teenagers in Winnipeg for twenty years, is among the idea's firmest supporters. In her experience, the trouble rarely begins with a single upsetting post. It builds slowly, through hours of comparison and late-night scrolling that young children are poorly equipped to handle. Parents, she argues, are fighting an uneven battle against products shaped by armies of designers whose job is to hold attention, and it is unreasonable to expect a household rule to compete. Mercer does not pretend verification would be watertight; determined teenagers will always find a way around it. But a rule that keeps most eleven-year-olds out, she reasons, is still far better than one that keeps out nobody. Seatbelts, after all, do not prevent every injury.

NARRATOR: Technology lawyer Daniel Okoro shares her worry but doubts the remedy. To check ages reliably, he points out, companies would need far more than a birthday: a scan of an identity document, perhaps, or software that estimates age from a photo of the user's face. Either way, millions of adults would be handing sensitive information to the very firms that critics already distrust. Okoro also thinks of teenagers who find support online that they cannot find at home, and who might be shut out, or pushed toward less supervised corners of the internet. Rather than guarding the front door, he would prefer tougher limits on what platforms may put in front of younger users once they are inside.

NARRATOR: Both arguments carry weight, and the disagreement is less about goals than about trade-offs. Mercer's case is most persuasive for younger children, for whom the benefits of these platforms are slim. Okoro's warning about privacy deserves a hearing, though many of these companies already gather far more personal information than an age check would require. A sensible path may borrow from both: genuine verification for the youngest users, and safer design for everyone else. What seems clear is that the honour system has had its chance.