There is no digital equivalent of "flash an ID card and be done with it" in the surveillance state era of the internet. Using a CC is the closest we have and even then you're giving data away.
Additionally, the laws I've read mandate that no data be retained, so you have stronger legal protections than typical credit card use, or even giving your ID to a store clerk for age restricted purchases (many stores will scan it without asking, and in some states scanning is required).
The difference though is that parents are generally the ones to give their kids their phones and devices. These devices could send headers to websites saying "I'm a kid" -- but this system doesn't exist, and parents apparently don't use existing parental controls properly or at all.
And there would be ways to work around it. If people find that privacy-preserving age verification is not good enough because "some kids will work around it", then nothing is good enough, period. Some will always work around anything.
It's not as easy as you may believe to prevent that type of access.
> The difference though is that parents are generally the ones to give their kids their phones and devices.
But either way I disagree. This comment sums up my point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122715#47128105
Its unfortunate that the application of this rule is being performed at the software level via ad-hoc age verification as opposed to the device level (e.g. smartphones themselves). However that might require the rigimirole of the state forcibly confiscating smartphones from minors or worrying nepalise outcomes.
Don't punish the rest of the web for crappy parenting and crappy incentives by companies/govts.
On the flip side, I do think we should also hold companies more accountable for this. We collectively prevented companies from advertising tobacco to minors through regulation with a pretty massive success rate. These companies know how harmful social media can be on youth, and there is little to no effective regulation around how children learn about these platforms and get enticed into them.
The clearest example is LGBTQ kids who want to talk to other LGBTQ kids, or enjoy LGBTQ content, without fundamentalist or just homophobic/transphobic parents finding out. Children of fundamentalist or cult members who want an escape from the cult are another common category.
You're saying the status quo and I think its fair to state you wouldn't intentionally design the status quo. Unless we have some wizard wheeze where we can easily arrest and detain or otherwise effectively punish parents without further reducing the quality of life for their children.
A child with an iPhone, Xbox, and a Windows Laptop won't be able to install discord unless the parent explicitly lets them, or opts out of all the parental controls those platforms have to offer.
The tech is here already, this is not about keeping children safe.
I'm against these age-verification laws, but to say it's impossible to comply with open-source software isn't really true.
Do you have an A+++++ oven with three panes of glass? It's [relatively] safe to touch and instead of monitoring if a child is somewhere near the oven you have to monitor if the child does not actively open the oven. That's much easier.
It worked really well up until she got a school managed chromebook for homework with no access controls.
Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography were all illegal for me to access as a kid but I wouldn’t have had any trouble getting any of it.
At 16 it was easier, but at 8 it wasn’t hard.
PS This post is partly satire, I will leave it to you as to which part is serious.
... and honest:
- they will honestly tell you that they'd be very happy to see you dead when you impose restrictions upon them (people who are older will of course possibly get into legal trouble for such a statement)
- they will tell they they wish you'd never have given birth to them (or aborted them)
- they will tell you that since they never wanted to be born, they owe you nothing
- ...
And this entire thing is about bad parenting. Its always easier to just give the kid a tablet and go back to whatever you were doing. Its always better to actually interact with the kid. That trade-off of time is important because if you mess up when they are young, you spend a lot more time handling issues later on. That time you gained by giving them a tablet will get payed back someday, usually with interest. That's what is happening here.
We've had pediatricians shame us for feeding our kids what they're willing to eat and not magically forcing "a more varied diet" down their throats at every meal, despite them being perfectly healthy by every objective metric. There are laws making it technically illegal for us to leave our kids unsupervised at home for any period of time in any condition, even a few minutes if one of us is running slightly late from work/appointments.
Your not-quite-2-year-old is too tall for a rear-facing car-seat? You're a bad parent, possibly a criminal and putting them at risk by flipping the seat to face forward, a responsible parent spends hundreds of dollars they don't have on several different seats to maybe find one that fits better or have their kid ride uncomfortably and arguably unsafely with their legs hyper-extended up the seatback.
Miss a flu shot because you were busy? Careful you don't come off as an antivaxxer.
And all of this and more on top of changing diapers, doctors' appointments, daycare, preschool, school, family activities and full time jobs?
Yeah, when my kids are old enough to engage with social media I will teach them how to use it responsibly, warn them about the dangers, make myself available to them if they have any problems, enforce putting the phones down at dinner and and keep a loose eye on their usage. Fortunately/unfortunately for them they have a technically sophisticated father who knows how to log web activity on the family router without their knowledge. So if anything goes sideways I'll have some hard information to look at. Most families don't have that level of technical skill.
Thank you for that.
Parents are legally and socially expected to keep their kids away from tobacco and alcohol. You're breaking legal and social convention if you allow your kids to access dangerous drugs.
Capitalist social media is exactly as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. Somebody should be held responsible for that, and the legal and social framework we already have for dealing with people who want to get kids addicted to shit works fairly well.
They work hand in hand with governments around the world, that's why they get the tax breaks. In return they hand over details about your opinions, social networks and whereabouts, not to mention facial recognition data via Facebook. They aren't remotely capitalist in any real sense since they have a bad business model.
Most actual studies done on this topic find very little evidence this is true.
It's a run-of-the-mill moral panic. People breathlessly repeating memes about whatever "kids these days" are up to and how horrible it is, as adults have done for thousands of years.
I expect some emotional attacks in response for questioning the big panic of the day, but before you do so please explore:
[1] Effects of reducing social media use are small and inconsistent: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...
[2] Belief in "Social media addiction" is wholly explained by media framing and not an actual addiction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2
[3] No causal link between time spent on social media and mental health harm: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t...
[4] The Flawed Evidence Behind Jonathan Haidt's Panic Farming: https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide...