These days we have to keep our minors shielded from the dangers, and frivolities, of adult life. Apparently that means keeping adult targeted ads away from our youth.

In order to help protect our kids, Twitter has implemented an age verification system to keep those dastardly adult beverage feeds away from prying eyes. Several companies have already taken advantage of the age restriction, including Coors Light, Jack Daniels Honey, and Jim Bean’s Skinny Girl Margarita.

The next time you try to follow a Twitter feed belonging to a company with an age restricted product, you’ll be prompted to reveal your age. If you happen to be too young, then Twitter will prevent you from following that particular feed.

The age verification process was developed by Buddy Media, through a partnership with Twitter, after a few brands requested the feature to protect them from public scrutiny. The request is understandable when you’re an adult oriented business, and you Tweet about adult situations, products and lifestyles.

Buddy Media says that Twitter has, and will not, ask for a user’s age when they sign-up, which means that, without the new age verification, anyone can follow an adult oriented account regardless of age. It’s blatantly obvious why this would be a problem.

How Twitter Age Verification Works

We’re going to sign up for an adult product feed that is using the new age verification system, just to show how it works.

First things first, you have to navigate to the corresponding feed and choose to follow it:

You will then receive a personal message confirming you want to follow an age restricted account, and it will also give you the link to the age verification page:

The age verification page will ask you to submit your birth date and conform to the associated privacy policy:

Twitter will take into account your geographic location using your IP address, and if your age is over the necessary requirement you’ll automatically be allowed to follow the profile:

Unless you choose the wrong age, or are not old enough, in which case the follow request is rejected:

If you make a mistake during the age verification process, you will have to wait an indefinite amount of time before you can fix the error. Which means you will not be permanently banned from following the corresponding profile, just temporarily. This of course, could mean that young audiences could take advantage of the system, but in such a case, the adult brand would be saved from scrutiny, hopefully.

There are no advanced measures taken to validate a user’s age, which means we’re on an honor system here, folks. Twitter will not scour the interwebs in search of your true age, or use third-party data to prove you selected the correct birth date.

How to Implement Buddy Media’s Age Verification in Your Profile

Any brands that would like to implement the age verification system can sign up by completing the Buddy Media registration. After registering, you can choose the age requirement in relation to geographical location, because age limits are different everywhere in the world. For reference, Buddy Media has already ensured the constraint is set to the legal drinking age, by default, for each country.

Buddy Media’s Age Verification Tool

It’s likely that we’ll start seeing a lot of adult oriented brands adopt the age verification tool like gambling companies, pharmaceutical makers, and hopefully those associated with the adult film industry.

The age verification tool will allow adult brands to launch more profitable marketing campaigns on Twitter, without a looming danger of corrupting the wrong audiences.

Twitter vs. Facebook

Facebook already prevents users of a certain age from viewing adult oriented advertisements, by taking into account their date of birth. Adult advertisements are filtered from younger Facebook users. Younger audiences can still interact with adult brands, however, by “liking” their page and receiving related content in their news feed. Hopefully Twitter’s new age verification tool will encourage Facebook to adopt a healthier censorship policy.

Of course, Buddy Media’s Twitter age verification tool is not a be-all-end-all solution, because younger audiences can just lie about their age if they actually want to. At least it’s a step in the right direction, though.