A recent study by the British organization Internet Matters has highlighted a significant gap between sophisticated age-verification technologies and the creative methods used by minors to circumvent them. Despite the “million-dollar” investments by tech giants into artificial intelligence and facial recognition, the report suggests that these systems are often defeated by remarkably low-cost, “cents-on-the-dollar” tactics.

The survey, which gathered data from 1,000 young people in the United Kingdom, found that half of the respondents consider current age-verification blocks easy to bypass.…