Traditional age verification tools such as credit cards tend to work best for sites selling products that cater to the adults-only market, Adam Thierer, a senior fellow with the technology think tank Progress and Freedom Foundation, said.
In other words, sites selling pornography, alcohol and gambling can easily use credit cards to verify users without limiting access for adults.
The problem, according to Thierer, is that social networking sites cater to both adult and teens, but teens lack a specific age identifier.
“Minors do not possess as many unique identifiers as adults do,” Thierer said. “They are not voters yet. They don’t have home mortgages or car loans. Most don’t have drivers licenses until they are 16."
For its part, MySpace has said that any effective measure designed to protect children online will require the support of parents, who must educate their kids. The company’s safety expert, Hemanshu Nigam, added that it was working closely with law enforcement officials on the problem.
In the meantime, various state Attorneys General have dismissed the idea that social networking sites face a unique age verification problem.
"Don’t tell me it can’t be done," Conn. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. "It’s a question of whether the company in good faith really wants to know those ages and sacrifice some of the excitement and coolness that comes with anonymity."
Attorneys General Jim Petro of Ohio and Greg Abbot of Texas have called for credit card-based age verification systems to be implemented, while Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly has called for age verification without specifying a solution.
MySpace competitor Facebook, which caters to students, attempts to verify age by only enrolling users with valid high school and college email addresses. With 8 million users, Facebook has a fraction of MySpace’s 90 million users.
Zoey’s Room, a site dedicated to 10 to 14 year-old girls, employs a more costly method of age verification, by independently verifying each member through a school or youth group.
"It does cost to create safe communities," Zoey’s Room founder Erin Reilly said. "I would rather have a manageable population and keep them all safe instead of looking for a million unique visitors."
The site, which charges $15 per year, has just 300 members.