Irish research: Children able to 'easily' bypass social media age restrictions

Bypassing age restrictions results in children being exposed to safety threats such as cyberbullying, online grooming, or exposure to inappropriate content. Photo: Peter Byrne/PA Wire

Children can completely bypass age verification measures on the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and WhatsApp simply by lying about their age, according to research.

The study, carried out by researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software also found there are real dangers to children who are “easily” bypassing the age verification process.