Jumio survey of 8,003 adults: 81% say age verification is critical, but 65% want single-use digital credentials to avoid sharing ID data repeatedly across platforms.
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SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Platforms that host adult content, gambling, or age-gated products face a credibility problem on age checks, according to a new Jumio survey. The company, a provider of AI-based identity tools, polled 8,003 adults across the U.S., U.K., Singapore, and Mexico. It found that 81% of respondents believe access to age-restricted materials online harms minors. That same share said age verification is an important tool for blocking that access.
"There's still a major trust gap around what happens to personal data during age verification," said Joe Kaufmann, global head of privacy at Jumio, in a statement released with the report. "Stronger age assurance doesn't necessarily mean collecting and permanently storing large amounts of sensitive data, but consumers need to understand what information is required and why."
The survey did not name a single platform. But its conclusions arrive as a growing number of U.S. states and European regulators pass laws requiring age-gated sites to verify users. Florida, Utah, and Texas, among others, have enacted restrictions on social-media accounts for minors. The U.K.'s Online Safety Act, enforced by Ofcom, mandates age checks for services that host pornography.
Consumers place primary responsibility for protection on parents, at 71%. Government agencies followed at 22%, then tech marketplaces (21%) and individual apps (19%). Still, 79% said they support government action to regulate access.
Kaufmann's point about data-handling stems from a tension in the numbers. Three-quarters of respondents said they would verify their own age to block minors from adult products. But 65% said they would prefer to verify once and reuse that credential across platforms, rather than repeat the process each time. That preference favors "reusable identity" products that store a digital token linked to a government ID – a model that regulators in Europe have both encouraged and scrutinized for privacy handling.
Jumio CEO Mark Lorion distinguished between estimation and verification. "Age estimation may reduce friction in lower-risk situations," he said. "But when platforms require high assurance, especially where minors are involved, the strongest age assurance is a multi-layered approach using a government-issued ID and a selfie check."
Age estimation, which uses an AI model to guess a person's age from a selfie, produces a probabilistic signal. It is faster but carries higher error rates at boundaries – for example, estimating a 19-year-old as 17. Verification, by contrast, matches a government-issued ID to a liveness check, confirming a threshold like "18 or over" with guaranteed identity attribution. Some platforms, including Meta's Facebook Dating and certain gambling sites, have moved toward the latter as regulation tightens.
The survey found 81% of respondents also believe access to age-gated materials is harmful to minors. That figure is consistent across all four surveyed countries, suggesting the consensus is not tied to any single regulatory regime.
Censuswide fielded the survey between April 14 and April 27, 2026. The margin of error for a sample of 8,003 is roughly plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.
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