Philippine Agencies Discuss PhilSys-Based Age Checks for Social Media

Philippine government agencies have opened a public-private discussion on using the PhilSys national identity system to verify the ages of social-media users.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center convened the town hall as officials prepare proposals for legislation on children’s access to social platforms. CICC Undersecretary Aboy Paraiso led the discussion with government, technology-industry and civil-society participants.

Officials described a proposed framework that would prohibit children under 13 from using social media and impose restrictions and parental-consent requirements on users aged 13 to 17. The Philippine Statistics Authority said PhilSys could establish the age and identity of the person opening or managing an account.

PhilSys issues a unique identity number backed by demographic and biometric enrollment. Connecting the system to age checks could allow a platform to determine whether a user falls above or below a required threshold, although the design of any data-sharing process would depend on the legislation and its implementing rules.

Private-sector participants raised privacy concerns during the forum. The National Privacy Commission said it would continue to act as an independent watchdog, placing data-protection oversight alongside the child-safety objectives of the proposal.

The initiative follows discussions between DICT, CICC and Meta in Singapore about age verification and online child protection. Officials said Meta was reconsidering measures for the Philippine market and would be required to comply if national legislation is enacted.

PhilSys is already being considered as an age-assurance tool in other online services. Roblox has agreed to integrate the Philippine national ID into its age checks, linking identity infrastructure with access controls for younger users.

Other regulated sectors are also expanding their use of the national ID. The central bank has proposed mandatory PhilSys authentication for financial institutions, while LandBank has introduced account opening through PhilSys face verification.

The social-media proposal remains part of a legislative process. The town hall gives agencies, platforms and privacy officials a venue to shape how age thresholds, parental consent and identity checks would operate if lawmakers adopt the framework. Its immediate output is policy input rather than a live verification service, keeping the distinction between the proposed rules and existing PhilSys deployments clear.

Sources: ABS-CBN News

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team