Real Safety AI Foundation / Research

Children, Schools, and Youth Policy

The Foreseeable Child: Age Verification Bypass, the Fraud That Never Was, and the Architecture of Deflected Responsibility

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working draft. Not peer reviewed.

Written
July 2026
Version
v0.1
Pages
31
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Abstract

Age verification is now the law of three continents. Texas and roughly half the American states condition access to adult content or social media on proof of age; the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act requires “highly effective age assurance”; the European Commission’s guidelines under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act prescribe age assurance that is accurate, reliable, and robust; Australia bans social media accounts for children under sixteen outright. And children defeat these systems continuously, not with sophisticated tools, but with the ordinary resourcefulness the systems were built to anticipate: a borrowed face, a purchased account, a birthdate field that believes whatever it is told. When a child gets through a mandated gate and is harmed on the other side, a question follows that the entire regulatory architecture is designed never to answer: who is responsible? This Article maps the architecture of deflection that currently answers “no one,” and dismantles it joint by joint. The platform points to compliance with the mandate. The age assurance vendor points to the user’s “fraud.” The legislature is immune. The blame that remains rolls downhill onto the child who got through. The Article shows that each deflection fails on the deflecting party’s own legal materials. The child cannot be the culpable party: no contract containing an age attestation was ever formed between the platform and the child, the operator is legally forbidden from relying on the child’s word about her age, and a century of protective-statute doctrine holds that a member of the class a statute protects cannot be charged with defeating it. The bypass cannot be a superseding cause: under the very-hazard rule, the child’s foreseeable evasion is the risk the duty exists to address, and it cannot simultaneously be the excuse for breaching that duty. And the compliance shield fails in every jurisdiction once each regime’s own text is

Keywords

  • age verification
  • age assurance
  • minors
  • superseding cause
  • negligence per se
  • contract formation
  • Online Safety Act
  • Digital Services Act
  • Section 230
  • Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
  • Restatement (Second) of Torts 449

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Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "The Foreseeable Child: Age Verification Bypass, the Fraud That Never Was, and the Architecture of Deflected Responsibility." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Draft, July 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/foreseeable-child/

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References (67)

This paper cites its sources in footnotes. Each authority is listed once, where it is first cited, with its footnote number.

  1. Footnote 1.Roblox Mandatory Age Verification 2026: Is Your Child Truly Safe?, Anapol Weiss (May 11, 2026), https://www.anapolweiss.com/blog/roblox-just-changed-everything-what-parents-need-to-know-about-the-new-age-checks/ (last visited July 10, 2026).
  2. Footnote 2.Age Assurance 2026: Highly Effective Compliance & ID Solutions, Klippa (Apr. 22, 2026), https://www.klippa.com/en/blog/information/age-assurance/ (last visited July 10, 2026).
  3. Footnote 5.Restatement (Second) of Torts § 449 (Am. L. Inst. 1965)
  4. Footnote 8.Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 129B.002–.003, https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CP/htm/CP.129B.htm (last visited July 10, 2026).
  5. Footnote 9.Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025).
  6. Footnote 10.Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 129B.006(b) (2025) (authorizing attorney general civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day of operation in violation of the age verification requirements and, “if, because of the entity’s violation of the age verification requirements of this chapter, one or more minors accesses sexual material harmful to minors, an additional amount of not more than $250,000”), https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CP/htm/CP.129B.htm (last visited July 10, 2026)
  7. Footnote 10.Age Verification Bill: Requirements, Risks, and Penalties, LegalClarity (Apr. 8, 2026), https://legalclarity.org/age-verification-bill-requirements-and-legal-challenges/ (last visited July 10, 2026).
  8. Footnote 10.Eric N. Holmes, Cong. Rsch. Serv., LSB11020, Online Age Verification (Part I): Current Context (2023), https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/HTML/LSB11020.web.html (last visited July 10, 2026) (Texas’s attorney general “has sole enforcement authority” over the state’s age verification law, while “Virginia’s and Utah’s pornography age verification laws provide only for enforcement by individuals”)
  9. Footnote 10.La. Rev. Stat. § 9:2800.29(B)(3)(a) (enacted by 2022 La. Acts 440, eff. Jan. 1, 2023) (a violating entity “shall be liable to an individual for damages resulting from a minor’s accessing the material, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees as ordered by the court”), https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=1293341 (last visited July 10, 2026)
  10. Footnote 10.Va. Code § 8.01-40.5
  11. Footnote 10.Age Verification Laws by State: What They Require, LegalClarity (May 28, 2026), https://legalclarity.org/age-verification-laws-by-state-what-they-require/ (last visited July 10, 2026).
  12. Footnote 11.Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 121.021–.022
  13. Footnote 11.Students Engaged in Advancing Tex. v. Paxton, No. 25A1389 (U.S. July 6, 2026)
  14. Footnote 11.Comput. & Commc’ns Indus. Ass’n v. Paxton, No. 25A1390 (U.S. July 6, 2026) (orders denying applications to vacate the stay).
  15. Footnote 12.15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506
  16. Footnote 12.16 C.F.R. pt. 312
  17. Footnote 12.Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, 90 Fed. Reg. 16918 (Apr. 22, 2025).
  18. Footnote 13.Online Safety Act 2023, c. 50 (UK)
  19. Footnote 13.Ofcom & Info. Comm’r’s Off., Joint Statement on Age Assurance (Mar. 2026), summarized in Ofcom and ICO Issue Joint Statement on Age Assurance, Covington, Inside Privacy (Apr. 1, 2026), https://www.insideprivacy.com/online-safety/ofcom-and-ico-issue-joint-statement-on-age-assurance/ (last visited July 10, 2026).
  20. Footnote 14.Online Safety Act 2023, c. 50, § 81(3) (UK)
  21. Footnote 14.Ofcom, Guidance on Highly Effective Age Assurance and Other Part 5 Duties ¶¶ 4.1, 4.23–4.24 (Jan. 16, 2025), https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/consultations/category-1-10-weeks/statement-age-assurance-and-childrens-access/guidance-on-highly-effective-age-assurance-and-other-part-5-duties.pdf (last visited July 10, 2026) (“the age verification or age estimation must be of such a kind, and used in such a way, that it is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is a child”).
  22. Footnote 15.UK Online Safety Act: Ofcom Publishes Guidance on Age Assurance and Children’s Access Assessments, Osborne Clarke (Feb. 4, 2025), https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/uk-online-safety-act-ofcom-publishes-guidance-age-assurance-and-childrens-access (last visited July 10, 2026).
  23. Footnote 16.Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 (Digital Services Act), art. 28(1).
  24. Footnote 17.European Comm’n, Guidelines on Measures to Ensure a High Level of Privacy, Safety and Security for Minors Online (July 14, 2025), https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-protection-minors (last visited July 10, 2026)
  25. Footnote 17.The Long-Awaited EU Guidelines on Article 28(1) DSA, HLC (Aug. 5, 2025), https://www.hlc.com/en/publications/the-longawaited-eu-guidelines-on-article-281-dsa-what-online-platforms-must-know (last visited July 10, 2026) (the method must be “robust enough to prevent circumvention”).
  26. Footnote 18.CNMC & AEPD, Decoding Article 28 of the DSA: Age Assurance and Service Design for Online Platforms (Mar. 24, 2026), https://www.aepd.es/en/press-and-communication/blog/decoding-article-28-dsa-age-assurance-service-design-online-platforms (last visited July 10, 2026).
  27. Footnote 20.Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 (Cth) (Austl.).
  28. Footnote 23.Angela Yang, Age Verification Is Coming for the Internet, NBC News (Apr. 16, 2026), https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/age-verification-laws-advocates-express-concerns-rcna331835 (last visited July 10, 2026) (“After Roblox began requiring biometric age checks to access chat, some users reported inaccurate age estimates, while others found ways to bypass the system.”).
  29. Footnote 25.Mind the Gap: Age Assurance Under the DSA (interface, Oct. 13, 2025), https://www.interface-eu.org/publications/age-assurance-gap (last visited July 10, 2026).
  30. Footnote 27.Lucy v. Zehmer, 196 Va. 493, 503 (1954).
  31. Footnote 29.Meyer v. Uber Techs., Inc., 868 F.3d 66, 74–80 (2d Cir. 2017).
  32. Footnote 30.Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind v. Container Store, Inc., 904 F.3d 70, 82–83 (1st Cir. 2018).
  33. Footnote 31.Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440, 444 n.1 (2006)
  34. Footnote 31.Granite Rock Co. v. Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters, 561 U.S. 287, 297 (2010)
  35. Footnote 31.K.F.C. v. Snap Inc., 29 F.4th 835, 837 (7th Cir. 2022) (“Even the most sweeping delegation cannot send the contract-formation issue to the arbitrator, because, until the court rules that a contract exists, there is simply no agreement to arbitrate.”).
  36. Footnote 32.16 C.F.R. § 312.5.
  37. Footnote 35.Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 129B.003.
  38. Footnote 36.Restatement (Second) of Torts § 483 cmt. c (Am. L. Inst. 1965)
  39. Footnote 36.Tamiami Gun Shop v. Klein, 116 So. 2d 421, 423 (Fla. 1959) (statutes protecting a class “from their inability to exercise self-protective care” are “construed to place the entire responsibility upon the defendant, and to require him to protect not only plaintiffs who are exercising reasonable care but those who are contributorily negligent as well”).
  40. Footnote 37.Vincent v. Riggi & Sons, Inc., 30 N.Y.2d 406 (1972) (quoting Karpeles v. Heine, 227 N.Y. 74, 80 (1919)).
  41. Footnote 38.Del E. Webb Corp. v. Superior Court, 726 P.2d 580 (Ariz. 1986).
  42. Footnote 39.Vincent, 30 N.Y.2d 406 (quoting Koester v. Rochester Candy Works, 194 N.Y. 92 (1909)).
  43. Footnote 40.Miller v. Warren, 390 S.E.2d 207 (W. Va. 1990) (syllabus) (“A two-year-old child is conclusively presumed incapable of negligence.”)
  44. Footnote 40.Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283A (Am. L. Inst. 1965).
  45. Footnote 41.Britton v. Wooten, 817 S.W.2d 443 (Ky. 1991).
  46. Footnote 42.Restatement (Second) of Torts § 302B (Am. L. Inst. 1965)
  47. Footnote 42.Britton, 817 S.W.2d 443.
  48. Footnote 44.Ofcom, Highly Effective Age Assurance: Frequently Asked Questions, https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/enforcement/highly-effective-age-assurance–frequently-asked-questions-faq.pdf (last visited July 10, 2026).
  49. Footnote 47.Restatement (Second) of Torts § 288C (Am. L. Inst. 1965), quoted in Ramirez v. Plough, Inc., 6 Cal. 4th 539, 548 (1993) (“Courts have generally not looked with favor upon the use of statutory compliance as a defense to tort liability.”).
  50. Footnote 50.Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 129B.006(b)(1), (3) (2025)
  51. Footnote 50.Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 18-701(F), (H) (“[t]he parent or guardian of a minor who accesses material harmful to minors . . . has a right of action against the offending entity,” with a penalty of up to $10,000 per day of violation and “an additional amount of not more than $250,000 if, because of the entity’s violation of the age verification requirements of this section, one or more minors accesses sexual material that is harmful to minors,” plus reasonable attorney fees and costs)
  52. Footnote 51.Ky. Rev. Stat. § 436.002 (created by 2024 Ky. Acts ch. 106, § 14, eff. July 15, 2024) (“[a]ny person injured by a violation of this section, or a parent or legal guardian on behalf of any minor injured by a violation of this section, may bring a civil action against the covered platform to recover . . . [d]amages of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) per instance that the covered platform failed to perform age verification to restrict the minor’s access to matter harmful to minors” as well as “[a]ctual damages, court costs, and reasonable attorney’s fees”).
  53. Footnote 52.NetChoice, LLC v. Murrill, No. 3:25-cv-00231 (M.D. La. Dec. 15, 2025)
  54. Footnote 52.NetChoice, LLC v. Griffin, No. 5:23-cv-05105 (W.D. Ark. Mar. 31, 2025) (permanently enjoining Arkansas’s Social Media Safety Act)
  55. Footnote 52.NetChoice, LLC v. Yost, No. 2:24-cv-00047 (S.D. Ohio Apr. 16, 2025) (same as to Ohio’s Parental Notification by Social Media Operators Act)
  56. Footnote 52.Louisiana Social Media Age Gate Law Hit by Permanent Injunction, Bloomberg Law (Dec. 16, 2025), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/louisiana-social-media-age-gate-law-hit-by-permanent-injunction (last visited July 10, 2026).
  57. Footnote 53.Tex. Bus. & Com. Code ch. 121
  58. Footnote 53.Utah Code Ann. §§ 13-76-201 to -202 (2025), https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title13/13.html (last visited July 10, 2026)
  59. Footnote 53.Texas and Louisiana Join Growing Trend of State Age Verification Laws for App Stores, Orrick (July 10, 2025), https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/2025/07/Texas-and-Louisiana-Join-Growing-Trend-of-State-Age-Verification-Laws-for-App-Stores (last visited July 10, 2026).
  60. Footnote 54.Lemmon v. Snap, Inc., 995 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. 2021) (negligent design claim predicated on the platform’s own Speed Filter feature not barred; the platform is sued “for its own conduct”).
  61. Footnote 55.Anderson v. TikTok, Inc., 116 F.4th 180 (3d Cir. 2024) (platforms “are not immunized if they are sued for their own expressive activity or content”).
  62. Footnote 61.The Online Safety Act: Children’s Duties, Age Verification and Content Moderation, Online Safety Act.net, https://www.onlinesafetyact.net/analysis/the-online-safety-act-childrens-duties-age-verification-and-content-moderation-on-user-to-user-services/ (last visited July 10, 2026).
  63. Footnote 69.Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 286, 288C
  64. Footnote 69.Vincent v. Riggi & Sons, Inc., 30 N.Y.2d 406 (1972) (statutory violation establishes fault as a matter of law)
  65. Footnote 74.Koester v. Rochester Candy Works, 194 N.Y. 92 (1909) (“No principle of estoppel is applicable.”), quoted in Vincent v. Riggi & Sons, Inc., 30 N.Y.2d 406 (1972).
  66. Footnote 77.Ramirez v. Plough, Inc., 6 Cal. 4th 539, 548 (1993)
  67. Footnote 77.Restatement (Second) of Torts § 288C cmt.

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