Many of these "social" media websites increasingly just fling AI-generated disturbing videos at people. I am sure we could build a web that is actually pleasant to use for kids, but we are not building it.
youtube for example: https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2006013682472669589
I think that's provably untrue based on the fact Saturday morning cartoons were massively popular as a curated content feed on TVs through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Kids (including me at the time) loved them and sank many hours into watching them. They were wholly approved by my parents, to the point where sometimes my parents would watch with me. Unless kids have fundamentally changed (which seems unlikely) the differentiating factor is almost certainly that kids simply now have access to far more unsuitable content.
Video games from the 90s were actually pleasant as a kid, and I'm happy to see my kids enjoying them today rather than the slot machines that the industry makes for kids these days…
(Unfortunately I'm well aware that it won't last long, because social pressure is impossible to fight at individual scale)
Well, one part of a proper education of a child is to teach them that life isn't about gratification. Neil Postman made this point already in Amusing Ourselves to Death. By educating kids with Sesame street you didn't teach them to love education, you taught them to love television.
When you make learning synonymous with fun people start to believe that if they aren't having fun they aren't learning. Which accounts I think for something that a lot of teachers at all levels have observed, kids are increasingly unable to learn if there's no immediate reward.
You will loose this argument because there is a real problem with children and AI slop. Especially because there is a problem with AI slop and handling it by people in general.
Provide a solution which doesn’t require that, like some other top commenter did. Otherwise, you have already lost.
If we did build it and it became popular, it would quickly be taken over by the same forces that are destroying the current internet. To get good social media sites (and a better internet as well), you would first have to change the economics of the entire system driving these forces. But as is said "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".
It's really not that dramatic. Just build it like more classic media. Curated content the company takes responsibility for, closed platform, pay upfront. Or have public programming, that is the oldest model there is.
Ad driven online content is especially bad for kids. But let's not pretend the only way to find an alternative is to end the world.
The fact is the "bad" solution is popular because consumers say they care about these things but then in real life they act like they don't. If no one watched the problem would solve itself. Thus, I'm not sure the solution is even to be found in platforms, if parents are burned out or don't have ways to make better choices for their kids.
That's a reason for these laws, to essentially just take it out of people's hands.
I'm going to restate my proposed age verification system here. I've posted it several times as a comment on this website. It works as follows:
1. A private company, let's call it AgeVerify, issues scratch-off cards with unique tokens on them. They are basically like gift cards.
2. AgeVerify's scratch-off cards are sold exclusively in IRL stores. Preferably liquor stores, adult stores, and/or tobacco/vape shops. Places that are licensed and check ID.
3. Anyone who wants to verify their age online can purchase a token at a store. The store must only demand ID if the buyer appears to be a minor (similar to alcohol or tobacco purchases). The store must never store the ID in any form whatsoever.
4. Giving or selling these tokens to a minor is a criminal offense. If a store does it, they lose their liquor or tobacco license. Treat it just like giving a minor alcohol or tobacco.
4a. Run public service announcement campaigns to communicate that giving an AgeVerify token to a child is like handing them a cigarette. There should be a clear social taboo associated with the legal ban.
5. The buyer of the AgeVerify token enters it into their account on whatever social media or adult website they want to use. The website validates the code with AgeVerify.
6. Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3 months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then it expires and a new one must be purchased.
7. A separate token is required for each website/each account.
8. The website is responsible for enforcing no account sharing.
No identifying information is stored anywhere. Kids find it very hard to access age-restricted materials online, just like the vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol or cigarettes.
And I am going to restate how it’s an absolutely terrible idea, and will always fail with its perverse incentives. This does not solve any problems and creates many more.
Your idea will create a massive black market for “adult validation tokens”, handing billions of dollars to criminal groups reselling these things.
And then where such a system goes in 5-10y. Sure it’s sorta anonymous today, but then new government decides - “let’s make it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit card.” Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand realtime access to the global logs.
Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about. Don't design or build oppression technology.
The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.
> Your idea will create a massive black market for “adult validation tokens”,
No bigger than the current black market for beer and cigs for kids. Adults have no need to resort to black markets. They can buy this stuff legitimately.
> Sure it’s sorta anonymous today, but then new government decides - “let’s make it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit card.”
They're already trying to do that right now! If we can head them off with a system that's as robust as age verification for alcohol we take away the moderate voter's support for making everyone upload passports to access FaceTok.
> Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about
Hasn't happened to cigs or booze so far. How long is "eventually"?
> The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.
This needs strong evidence. My evidence is that we already do it for many products.
> Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand realtime access to the global logs
If you treat everything as a potential slippery slope you won't get anything done. Right now the threat is governments mandating actual ID and destroying everyone's anonymity under the guise of protecting the children. I fear they have the votes to ram it through. Unless we find a good enough alternative that preserves privacy.
I think your objection regarding future governments is valid. The others I don't think are valid. For the record I agree with your conclusion that any effort like this is doomed to fail. But we already enforce point of sale age checks at scale across multiple domains. And as for perverse incentives, part of the proposal is more or less identical to how scratch cards for gambling work. There probably is a black market for these and there probably have been attempts at fraud. But they aren't very large, not enough to tank the system anyway.
> Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about
Nobody is being censored. We regulate who can buy alcohol or tobacco, gamble at casinos, or operate a motor vehicle without it turning into a slippery slope.
Politically, the free speech argument might have had a point if Silicon Valley’s most-visible “free speech” advocates hadn’t lined up behind an authoritarian who’s creating diplomatic tension (and thus domestic political capital) the world over.
No disrespect but paying to verify age feels absurd, let alone putting a private company in charge of what should be an essential function of the government.
How about when you turn 18 or whatever the government gives you a signed JWT that contains your DOB? Anyone who needs to verify your age can check that and simply validate the signature via a public key published by the government.
Simply grab a new JWT when you need it, to ensure privacy.
And sure, sprinkle in some laws that make it illegal to store or share JWTs for clearly fraudulent intents.
> the vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol or cigarettes
This feels like it comes from an affluent perspective, where I grew up it was trivial to acquire these things and much worse, there will always be someone’s older brother etc who will do this for $20 because he’s got nothing to lose.
> The store must only demand ID if the buyer appears to be a minor (similar to alcohol or tobacco purchases). The store must never store the ID in any form whatsoever.
Your plan requires nuanced implementation details which the general public is ill equipped to understand let alone independently verify. In particular, it is already normalized (in America at least) that liquor and weed stores will ID even the elderly, and scan the barcode on the ID into their computer. Let's say you want to ban the computer part outright; the public won't understand why, because it's already normal to them. So maybe you permit scanning IDs but regulate the way businesses can store/use that data; the public can't see into the computer, they have no idea if the law is being followed or not. This leads to lax attitudes towards compliance and enforcement both, and furthermore, likely results in public cynicism aka low expectations, which will give way to complacency. This is why I don't think your plan will work well, it's doomed to degenerate into surveillance.
> it is already normalized (in America at least) that liquor and weed stores will ID even the elderly, and scan the barcode on the ID into their computer
Then why are y'all so against Digital ID? We don't make you do that in Canada, it's just the clerk eyeballing your ID if you don't look old enough. I can't believe people are letting their ID get scanned and associated with vice purchases. Is it mandatory? Land of the free, eh?
I didn't even think about the ID scanning that already takes place. States that have legalized weed still have people who avoid the legal stores because of the scanning. You don't know who has access to that data and how it could implicate you because weed is still illegal on the federal level (e.g. gun owners may be wary of buying from these stores)
You can do the same thing with online payments combined with a ZKP token system.
The issue is and will always remain reselling the age verification tokens. The entire system is pretty pointless. Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they will be very motivated to do so. Criminals will be eager to aid them for some change too.
Either you forget age verification, or you can forget about privacy. Because identity theft is the only hoop big enough for most kids not to make the jump - and even that may not hold, typically identity theft is carried out for financial returns, the age verification requirement will change the calculus on that and will likely expand that particular black market to both kids and people valuing their privacy.
In my opinion it should be the parent's job to police their kid's access to an internet terminal. It's not even that hard. Mitigating the mistakes of parents at the expense of everyone's privacy is a poor trade.
Just because something can and will be circumvented doesn't make it useless.
People will continue to murder other people. That doesn't mean that criminalizing and punishing murder is pointless.
Now, whether the above scheme is prudent or workable, that's a separate question. But the counterargument to the scheme cannot be "It's all or nothing".
> The issue is and will always remain reselling the age verification tokens. The entire system is pretty pointless.
I forgot to mention in my original post. I'd also rate limit purchases. Maybe only allow purchasing one per visit.
> Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they will be very motivated to do so.
Maybe? Kids can just buy alcohol or cigs or drugs from criminals today. But most can't or don't. Some do, and we accept that as a society. And we punish the criminals who enable it.
This isn't like illegal drugs, where criminals have a massive market (adults with cash). A black market catering to only minors isn't very lucrative.
Moreover social media's network effects work in our favor. If most kids can't join, their friends are less motivated to get in.
> Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3 months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then it expires and a new one must be purchased.
That sounds fantastic, were just one step away from making social media entirely controlled by one single party
Perfect to push anyone you don't like into irrelevancy, politicians will love this
Journalists too, finally they can be rid of these pesky YouTubers that show how politically captured they're! Just need to get someone with admin permission in that company and you're golden
Politicians wouldn't know who has which "adult code", so they wouldn't be able to get a singular "adult code" banned/early expired by the (supposedly corrupt) code-keeping company. To know which code a particular Youtuber has, they'd need to be able to get that info from Youtube, and if they "have a man on the inside" of Youtube then they can just ask that person to ban the Youtuber in question.
Once you're selling them, put a bounty where kids can turn in the cards for money. Then you'll both set a price floor and know which stores are selling them and you can find out who's doing it. Nothing says that a token has to last for a constant amount of time. If kids turn in more than a certain percentage, then that location would have theirs expire early.
What I like here is that you've turned a digital problem into a physical one where we already have solutions and intuition for how to enforce rules.
A private monopoly sounds like a great idea. A profit incentive for access to social media definitely won't result in the price of these tokens skyrocketing to extract as much money as possible.
It doesn't even have to be a private monopoly, it can be a public service.
For example in Quebec, liquor stores are managed by the government, called "Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ)" or legal cannabis is managed by "Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC)".
I don't see why other restrictions can't follow the same pattern?
Generally these kinds of private monopolies also have public-set prices.
Which is a huge disaster for expensive things (like your power bill), but is much less of one for a token that takes 50 cents of human labour and 0.5 cents of computing to produce.
Japan has a similar system for payments. If you prefer to buy things online with cash they give you a barcode you take to any convenience store. The store scans it and you pay with cash.
1. You can go to the mayor's house to get the token. No need to associate tobacco/alcohol to it.
2. It's free.
3. It's culturally enforced to exchange tokens with other people. This way users themselves help make sure it's truly impossible to trace their activity.
4. It's illegal to publish your or someone else's token. It's like a paper ID, with a QR code.
5. Can be reused. Expires after 5 years .
This way if you want 5 pornhub accounts you don't have to buy 5 stamps. You are also extra sure that the tokens cannot be linked to you because you can exchange it with anyone.
What happens with point 7 when you verify your age to Google Plus and then you go to Reddit and “sign in with Google?”. If your verification doesn’t transfer, that would be silly because you aren’t a different age.
Trying to start a new social network in your world either has “every new signup must go to a store and spend money” or every new social network becomes tied to “sign in with Google”.
Your plan locks us into the current social networking forever?
Perhaps we should drop age verification and just ban sites that use AI to scam attention for everyone? I would be happy enough if X and FB were banned outright.
Sounds good. Except the reverify thing. The whole reverification is becoming a bit of a disease lately.
I've already had my bank AND my mobile provider demanding an updated scan of my ID. Which is completely BS, after all I'm still the same person. I didn't suddenly become someone else. It's ridiculous they demand it.
But these cards sound like a better solution than using government ID yes.
Not only this but every age verification system will create an immense motive for the kids to obtain an "adult pass". Money, uncles, "family engineering" on parents or obscure paths will be used by the kid to become a hero to their peers. In a few months/years the system will degenerate and become abandoned.
That (mostly) doesn't happen for booze or cigs today. You're alleging that kids will behave like heroin junkies in order to access social media. If that's true, social media is more dangerous than we thought, and we should be having a very different conversation.
>6. Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3 months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then it expires and a new one must be purchased.
> 7. A separate token is required for each website/each account.
I propose instead:
A single code valid for 10 packets sent to a single IP address, or 30 seconds, whichever expires first.
So a kid just has to get their hands on a token then access is open to restricted websites for a year (or whatever time period) while adults are inconvenienced? The black markets for these things would pop up instantly and you'd deal with secondary effects of that (scams, fraud, etc.)
I think the whole idea of age verification on the internet is dystopian and should be tossed in the garbage.
I'm half convinced it's satire but I'll answer sincerely anyway.
As an adult I just couldn't be bothered buying this again year over year, let alone even once. I'm dropping the site instead of going to the store to buy this. Guess I'd just go fully offline.
Why would you need to buy it over and over again? Your age verification isn't going to become invalid as if you magically aged backwards. The time limit is (presumably) so the tokens can't be stored and resold on the black market indefinitely.
I didn't say "monopoly" anywhere in my post. Strangely you're the second commenter who assumed that. Probably a communication error on my part, because I only named AgeVerify in my example and didn't enumerate their competitors.
I don't believe the goal of 'age verification' has anything to do with children. Politicians have been very explicit objecting to anonymous people online complaining about them including calling them 'fat'.
> I don't believe the goal of 'age verification' has anything to do with children.
Some people pushing for it are sincere. I believe keeping children away from social media or adult content online is good. But I also believe most of the existing proposals to do it dangerously erode adults' privacy. And that's the real end goal for many politicians.
Implementing a fully anonymous, pretty-good-but-not-perfect age verification system can cut the legs out from all the demands to upload ID to "protect the children". I've proposed a relatively simple one that doesn't rely on zero knowledge proofs or something else the general public can't understand.,
While this can work I just don’t want any bans on speech for any age. These social media bans are going to next lead to porn restrictions and ultimately they will mainstream Christian theocratic values in public policy through an ever shifting morality goal post. That’s how it always goes. Enabling it through such solutions feels like a risk.
It's arguable, even if you're right, that the net loss to humanity is still far greater without these restrictions than with. Modern social media is leading to multiple generations of emotionally stunted, non-verbal children. Many of whom literally struggle to read.
If you haven't seen it in person, it is now incredibly common for children as young as 1 or 2 to be handed an iPad and driven down an algorithmic tunnel of AI generated content with multiple videos overlaid on top. I've seen multiple examples of children scrolling rapidly through videos of Disney characters getting their heads chopped off to Five Nights at Freddy's music while laughing hysterically. They do this for hours. Every day. It's truly horrifying.
Parents are just as poorly equipped at dealing with this as the children are, the difference being that at least their brains have already fully developed so that there is no lasting permanent damage.
I am sure that they will not lead to “Christian theocratic values in public policy” in France. That value system is fringe in France, one of the most irreligious and historically anti-clerical cultures in the world.
Among people who identify as Christian in France, the ones who could be described as radical or fundamentalist are a very small minority.
I’m in my 40’s and I’d rather just use a VPN, I can’t imagine that young people will feel any differently. Governments should feel free to take performative measures, and we’re free to circumvent them.
Leave people to their fantasies of digital control and let them learn lessons the hard way. This is not a technical issue anyway.
It's ok to be mean if you're constructive. You aren't. Your comment violates site guidelines. But here we are in 2026 so instead of flagging you, let me be nice.
Give me a reason why my idea is "garbage" that hasn't already been covered in the comments. I'll summarize the current comments and my responses:
1. "Age verification is censorship and evil"/"This is the parents' job, not the state's" - That's a valid point of view, and I understand where it's coming from. But IMO it's increasingly a losing one.
2. "It's not perfect/it can be circumvented by ..." - All of the same circumventions also apply to tobacco and alcohol. Everyone accepts that and the world goes on. We prosecute people who break those laws. Whatever the harms of social media and adult content, they aren't worse than literal poisons that cause car accidents and cancer.
3. "It doesn't preserve privacy because they record ID where I live" - Fix the law. Ban scanning ID where you live. I can't believe you ever accepted that for tobacco or alcohol but now's your chance.
4. "Why do I have to pay? This should be provided by the government" - Then we're back to ZKPs (not comprehensible to laypeople) and paranoia that governments are tracking you anyway. But hey, I'm not a policy or crypto expert, so I'll defer to people who are. Maybe this aspect can be improved.
5. "This requires a lot of new legislation" - Yes. Governments are already at work writing legislation for age verification. Do you want to be proactive to make it privacy forward or sit passively while they decide for us?
Or we have devices attest user age. On setup, the device has the option to store a root ("guardian"?) email address. Whenever "adult mode" is activated or the root email is changed, a notification must first be sent to the prior root email. That notification may optionally contain a code that must be used to proceed with the relevant action, though the user should be warned of the potential device-crippling consequences.
This setting is stored in a secure enclave and survives factory resets.
I will note that these two systems are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of ways to "think of the children" that don't trample on everybody's freedom.
A very important part of the system is a nationwide program of sending homeless people to concentration camps so that teenagers wouldn't bribe them to buy TittyTokens.
Like seriously, do you really think that if currently minors can buy tobacco and alcohol using unlawful means, then your TittyTokens will somehow be magically immune to the same problem because you really really wish they would?
You can't patch this without creating some form of a central database of who exactly buys how many TittyTokens.
> do you really think that if currently minors can buy tobacco and alcohol using unlawful means, then your TittyTokens will somehow be magically immune
No I fully admit some minors will still get access to FaceTok. We accept this failure for alcohol and tobacco. We don't have internet connected beer cans phoning home when you open them, asking to scan your face.
But at least where I live, most kids aren't falling over drunk or puffing away at school bus stops. So if the system is good enough for selling actual poisons, it's good enough to limit most minors' access to online vices.
Moreover social media has network effects. If most kids aren't on it, the rest will likely not bother either.
You underestimate the average American teenager’s shell-buying game (honed for decades by our asinine alcohol laws.) I’m sure kids elsewhere would pick it up pretty fast too.
Plus, this would spawn massive online black markets for the codes, fueled by crypto/gift cards/other shady means of money transmission.
The comparison to alcohol is apt. Some motivated teenagers succeed in getting beer. Most don't. All the adults consider that enough of a success (which it is) that any proposed legislation to require internet-connected beer cans with facial verification is dead-on-arrival.
This is a typical technical solution to a sociopolitical problem. The powers-that-be are not comfortable with the free-for-all that exists on the internet. All these laws are meant to fix that squeaky wheel, one ball-bearing at a time.
"Children" gets the Right to march behind you unquestioningly. "Misinformation/Nazis" does the same for the Left. This is now a perfect recipe for a shit sandwich.
I agree. But if you find a different way to protect the children, that normal people can understand and relate to ("It's like buying beer"), and still maintain privacy, you take away at least one leg of support for what a lot of states really want to do (remove anonymity).
It's better than the fatalism in your comment IMO.
The Australian law, as written, is not good. It names 10 specific platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, etc) that must comply with the law. That means any social network that is not explicitly named can still happily serve children.
Devil's advocate: what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one? When can I look forward to having to give a DNA test to read HN?
My own website has a bulletin board that offers a personalized list of messages after you login: whatever threads you have not yet read. And so do many other websites of this style. So this cannot be a differentiating aspect.
From a definition standpoint, hn is a social media site. From a legislation standpoint, it's not nearly popular (infamous?) enough to legislate (the mentioned sites have had enough negative coverage to manufacturer consent for this invasion of privacy: cyber bullying, destructive challenges, etc.)
When it is, and when your local government becomes sufficiently captured by the user surveillance industrial complex, you will need real world verification here.
Social media typically implies a website where users are sharing self-created content. If a website with comments counts a social media, than all web2.0 is social media and there's practically no distinction between the web and social media.
Social media has the power to ruin a child’s life by letting them publish self incriminating information. A normal website is a primarily read only interaction. Prohibit child generated content and let kids view websites.
Because there is real observable harm to kids from those websites that there isn’t from HN?
It’s like asking why you prevent kids from buying alcohol but don’t stop them from buying fruit juice.
There is a lot of writing on what makes “social media” particularly more harmful, and its addictive nature etc, but again, we don’t need to necessarily get into the cause and knowing it’s harmful should be sufficient.
HN is social media, and if you look at the implementation of the Australian law it's more political than anything else. They banned X but did not list BlueSky, which has an ongoing pedophilia problem. This has nothing to do with protecting kids from social media it's just political maneuvering, like banning children from reading the epoch times but not the NYT
To find out what the difference is under this specific draft legislation we'd have to look at its text. I have no idea how to find copies of draft French legislation and I don't read French.
To give an idea of how such laws might approach it, the recent New York Law requiring social media sites to display mental health warnings was written to cover sites with addictive feeds. Here's how it defined those:
> "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another:
> (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users;
> (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device;
> (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (e) the media are direct and private communications;
> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user;
(> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or
> (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.
Too much of a coordinated efforts between western countries, thus it cannot fail. The decisions have been made and your voice pretty much doesn't matter.
The confusion you are displaying is because you are not cognizant of whats going on throughout the world particularly in advanced economies that have opened their doors to all forms of migration legal and illegal.
The timing of this coincides with countries in particular have seen a major rise in anti-migration sentiments which have become very fashionable and popular among young men in particular as polls show a global trend of men under 30s are shifting towards right wing with women towards leftwing.
Suddenly, they decide NOW is the time to stop despite the fact that they've allowed young people to be exposed to all sorts of "dangerous content" and algorithms for decades, in the late 90s and early 2000s as teenagers we had uncensored access to the internet, warez, anarchy, shock as they have circumventions widely shared among each other today.
In short, these countries are so concerned about a civil unrest in particular between religious groups that are perceived to have "overstayed their welcome" that they are outright trying to shutdown online discourse both legitimate and exaggerated.
Europe, in particular UK, are on the brink of a major civil war as per intelligence reports and the ban for the young won't be the last but that the net would be cast even wider. It's a last ditched effort bandaid solution to keep the dam from bursting. With the backdrop of Keir Starmer's threats to extradite Americans and jail people for posting grievances against the demographic crisis, you can see where Europe and other advanced economies even in places like Korea mirror the trends, conflicts and draconian laws to buy time for the inevitable.
If we want to keep this debate going there has to be an understanding of the political context and direction that can only be realized through inference and intuition. They will never openly announce true motives as that would hinder the objective. The comments I am seeing are awfully similar to the confusion and fierce debate I see around wrestling control of TikTok, which have largely been blamed on China, but the concern around uncensored videos of atrocities committed in the middle east reaching hundreds of millions of young people that has shifted steadfast opinions of a certain country which for decades were positive, now show significant departure among age brackets within the same political camp which shocked a lot of old people from that same side.
Perception is everything and the question "asking for a source on if these bans popular" completely misses the mark and irrelevant, rather the more interesting question is,
"will these bans that limit freedom of information and speech escalate and proliferate in the near future and whether France, Australia, Korea is just the start?"
" will the countries reviewing ban like new zealand, greece, canada invite more countries to join the trend?"
" why are these bans being accelerated in countries that have seen a large wave of migrations that are causing major frictions?"
I'm one of the weirdos that should be on board with this, but I'm against it. This will do harm to marginalized youth and push younger people to lie and find ways around the ban.
Plus, we saw that in Australia that the lobby behind the ban was in fact an ad agency that makes ads for gambling apps.
Here is France, the ban is probably just a way to avoid legislation against companies selling crap that isn't for kids like vape pens and sports gambling apps.
It sounds like you don't like social media. With that in mind, why is it good to add a layer of user surveillance on the Internet? Where's the connection between "social media is harmful" and "it is good to add surveillance"?
If you think social media is harmful, wouldn't it be good to regulate social media? What does regulating French (or Australian, or wherever) citizens have to do with it?
The question is how this is implemented, in particular age verification.
It's usual to say that MPs are old people that don't understand current technologies, but in law preparation committees they appear to be well aware; in particular, they mentioned a "double-anonymity" system where the site requesting your age wouldn't know your name, and the entity serving age requests wouldn't know which site it is for. They are also aware that people walk-around age verification checks with e.g. fake ID cards, possibly AI generated.
I'm not sure if it is actually doable reliabily, and I'm not sure either that the MPs that will have to vote the law will know the topic as well as the MPs participating in these committees.
I would personally consider other options like a one-button admin config for computers/smartphones/tablets that restricts access according to age (6-14, 15-18) and requiring online service providers to announce their "rating" in HTTP headers. Hackers will certainly object that young hackers could bypass this, but like copy-protection, the mission can be considered complete when the vast majority of people are prevented from doing what they should not do.
Alternatively one could consider the creation of a top-level domain with a "code of content" (which could include things like "chat control") enforced by controlling entity. Then again, an OS-level account config button could restrict all Internet accesses to this domain.
Perhaps an national agency could simply grant a "child safe" label to operating systems that comply to this.
This type of solutions would I think also be useful in schools (e.g. school-provided devices), although they are also talking about severely limiting screen-time at school.
The only way they could successfully implement it is with constant live video surveillance, otherwise parents who oppose the ban can easily get around it. Which is going to be at least a double digit percentage of the population. And the police don't even have the resources to investigate theft and robbery, let alone go after millions of parents for helping their children create social media accounts.
> parents who oppose the ban can easily get around it
Irresponsible parents are irresponsible parents, and they can do much worse than letting their children wander on the Net alone. IFAIK no law at least here forbids parents from giving alcohol or tobacco to their children, even though it is forbidden to sell those products to them. Toxic social media are mostly the same.
Although the topic is a ban, I think the idea is less about forbidding and punishing, and more about helping - albeit in questionably manner according to some - helping parents with "regulating" the access of their children to the Net. Of course, the easy answer is to recommend giving them dumb phones instead of smartphones, but really a smartphone is too useful to be ignored around high-school age.
Give it a rest already, there aren't logically perfect solutions to be had because we don't live in a world of simply binaries, so people compromise on best-fit solutions rather than obsessing over the edge cases and ending up doing nothing at all.
Put the onus on the social media companies, then have a 3rd party investigate how much content is bypassing their own protections and then fine them. Give a kickback to those investigators to incentivize them to find more violations. Rinse and repeat.
The second video shows the head of the CNIL (~ the "regulator") mostly repeating platitudes about various topics, but nothing about age restriction for social networks. Did i miss anything?
Readit News
"Pleasant for kids to use is the polar opposite of kids finding it a pleasure to use"
(Unfortunately I'm well aware that it won't last long, because social pressure is impossible to fight at individual scale)
When you make learning synonymous with fun people start to believe that if they aren't having fun they aren't learning. Which accounts I think for something that a lot of teachers at all levels have observed, kids are increasingly unable to learn if there's no immediate reward.
It’s ID verification.
I don't want to be forced to doxx myself just because some parents can't control their children.
Provide a solution which doesn’t require that, like some other top commenter did. Otherwise, you have already lost.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
Ad driven online content is especially bad for kids. But let's not pretend the only way to find an alternative is to end the world.
The fact is the "bad" solution is popular because consumers say they care about these things but then in real life they act like they don't. If no one watched the problem would solve itself. Thus, I'm not sure the solution is even to be found in platforms, if parents are burned out or don't have ways to make better choices for their kids.
That's a reason for these laws, to essentially just take it out of people's hands.
I would rather have my kid watch nothing but AI slop then get even 30 seconds of FAUX news. Lost my father to actual brain rot, FUCK YOU NEWSCORP!
1. A private company, let's call it AgeVerify, issues scratch-off cards with unique tokens on them. They are basically like gift cards.
2. AgeVerify's scratch-off cards are sold exclusively in IRL stores. Preferably liquor stores, adult stores, and/or tobacco/vape shops. Places that are licensed and check ID.
3. Anyone who wants to verify their age online can purchase a token at a store. The store must only demand ID if the buyer appears to be a minor (similar to alcohol or tobacco purchases). The store must never store the ID in any form whatsoever.
4. Giving or selling these tokens to a minor is a criminal offense. If a store does it, they lose their liquor or tobacco license. Treat it just like giving a minor alcohol or tobacco.
4a. Run public service announcement campaigns to communicate that giving an AgeVerify token to a child is like handing them a cigarette. There should be a clear social taboo associated with the legal ban.
5. The buyer of the AgeVerify token enters it into their account on whatever social media or adult website they want to use. The website validates the code with AgeVerify.
6. Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3 months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then it expires and a new one must be purchased.
7. A separate token is required for each website/each account.
8. The website is responsible for enforcing no account sharing.
No identifying information is stored anywhere. Kids find it very hard to access age-restricted materials online, just like the vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol or cigarettes.
Your idea will create a massive black market for “adult validation tokens”, handing billions of dollars to criminal groups reselling these things.
And then where such a system goes in 5-10y. Sure it’s sorta anonymous today, but then new government decides - “let’s make it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit card.” Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand realtime access to the global logs.
Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about. Don't design or build oppression technology.
The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.
No bigger than the current black market for beer and cigs for kids. Adults have no need to resort to black markets. They can buy this stuff legitimately.
> Sure it’s sorta anonymous today, but then new government decides - “let’s make it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit card.”
They're already trying to do that right now! If we can head them off with a system that's as robust as age verification for alcohol we take away the moderate voter's support for making everyone upload passports to access FaceTok.
> Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about
Hasn't happened to cigs or booze so far. How long is "eventually"?
> The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.
This needs strong evidence. My evidence is that we already do it for many products.
> Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand realtime access to the global logs
If you treat everything as a potential slippery slope you won't get anything done. Right now the threat is governments mandating actual ID and destroying everyone's anonymity under the guise of protecting the children. I fear they have the votes to ram it through. Unless we find a good enough alternative that preserves privacy.
- forces people to go to stores that primarily sell addictive substances
- prices out poor people, who can't afford adult websites, _or_
- even more money meant for bills / food is spent on addictions
- will have a stigma attached (why is that preacher in the liquor store? For porn or whisky?)
Nobody is being censored. We regulate who can buy alcohol or tobacco, gamble at casinos, or operate a motor vehicle without it turning into a slippery slope.
Politically, the free speech argument might have had a point if Silicon Valley’s most-visible “free speech” advocates hadn’t lined up behind an authoritarian who’s creating diplomatic tension (and thus domestic political capital) the world over.
How about when you turn 18 or whatever the government gives you a signed JWT that contains your DOB? Anyone who needs to verify your age can check that and simply validate the signature via a public key published by the government.
Simply grab a new JWT when you need it, to ensure privacy.
And sure, sprinkle in some laws that make it illegal to store or share JWTs for clearly fraudulent intents.
> the vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol or cigarettes
This feels like it comes from an affluent perspective, where I grew up it was trivial to acquire these things and much worse, there will always be someone’s older brother etc who will do this for $20 because he’s got nothing to lose.
So you think we shouldn't card for cigarettes or alcohol either? I'm confused.
Your plan requires nuanced implementation details which the general public is ill equipped to understand let alone independently verify. In particular, it is already normalized (in America at least) that liquor and weed stores will ID even the elderly, and scan the barcode on the ID into their computer. Let's say you want to ban the computer part outright; the public won't understand why, because it's already normal to them. So maybe you permit scanning IDs but regulate the way businesses can store/use that data; the public can't see into the computer, they have no idea if the law is being followed or not. This leads to lax attitudes towards compliance and enforcement both, and furthermore, likely results in public cynicism aka low expectations, which will give way to complacency. This is why I don't think your plan will work well, it's doomed to degenerate into surveillance.
Then why are y'all so against Digital ID? We don't make you do that in Canada, it's just the clerk eyeballing your ID if you don't look old enough. I can't believe people are letting their ID get scanned and associated with vice purchases. Is it mandatory? Land of the free, eh?
But in any case, my proposal would ban ID scanning altogether. There's no good reason to do it for any purchase.
The issue is and will always remain reselling the age verification tokens. The entire system is pretty pointless. Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they will be very motivated to do so. Criminals will be eager to aid them for some change too.
Either you forget age verification, or you can forget about privacy. Because identity theft is the only hoop big enough for most kids not to make the jump - and even that may not hold, typically identity theft is carried out for financial returns, the age verification requirement will change the calculus on that and will likely expand that particular black market to both kids and people valuing their privacy.
In my opinion it should be the parent's job to police their kid's access to an internet terminal. It's not even that hard. Mitigating the mistakes of parents at the expense of everyone's privacy is a poor trade.
People will continue to murder other people. That doesn't mean that criminalizing and punishing murder is pointless.
Now, whether the above scheme is prudent or workable, that's a separate question. But the counterargument to the scheme cannot be "It's all or nothing".
I forgot to mention in my original post. I'd also rate limit purchases. Maybe only allow purchasing one per visit.
> Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they will be very motivated to do so.
Maybe? Kids can just buy alcohol or cigs or drugs from criminals today. But most can't or don't. Some do, and we accept that as a society. And we punish the criminals who enable it.
This isn't like illegal drugs, where criminals have a massive market (adults with cash). A black market catering to only minors isn't very lucrative.
Moreover social media's network effects work in our favor. If most kids can't join, their friends are less motivated to get in.
That sounds fantastic, were just one step away from making social media entirely controlled by one single party
Perfect to push anyone you don't like into irrelevancy, politicians will love this
Journalists too, finally they can be rid of these pesky YouTubers that show how politically captured they're! Just need to get someone with admin permission in that company and you're golden
Why? Multiple companies could compete in the market of age verification tokens.
Right now we have actual partisans buying actual social media companies (Twitter, TikTok) to control them. That's a much bigger threat vector.
What I like here is that you've turned a digital problem into a physical one where we already have solutions and intuition for how to enforce rules.
For example in Quebec, liquor stores are managed by the government, called "Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ)" or legal cannabis is managed by "Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC)".
I don't see why other restrictions can't follow the same pattern?
Which is a huge disaster for expensive things (like your power bill), but is much less of one for a token that takes 50 cents of human labour and 0.5 cents of computing to produce.
So it would be
1. Site let's you pick your "age provider"
2. You log to you bank/govt site
3. They only get age as response.
Even easier with CC, shops could just send payment request with minimal age, if it doesn't pass, no sell
They also know who you are. This rules them out of a privacy-forward age verification system.
Why are we pretending Facebook and X don’t?
Start with liability. The age gates will erect themselves.
1. You can go to the mayor's house to get the token. No need to associate tobacco/alcohol to it.
2. It's free.
3. It's culturally enforced to exchange tokens with other people. This way users themselves help make sure it's truly impossible to trace their activity.
4. It's illegal to publish your or someone else's token. It's like a paper ID, with a QR code.
5. Can be reused. Expires after 5 years .
This way if you want 5 pornhub accounts you don't have to buy 5 stamps. You are also extra sure that the tokens cannot be linked to you because you can exchange it with anyone.
Trying to start a new social network in your world either has “every new signup must go to a store and spend money” or every new social network becomes tied to “sign in with Google”.
Your plan locks us into the current social networking forever?
I've already had my bank AND my mobile provider demanding an updated scan of my ID. Which is completely BS, after all I'm still the same person. I didn't suddenly become someone else. It's ridiculous they demand it.
But these cards sound like a better solution than using government ID yes.
> 7. A separate token is required for each website/each account.
I propose instead:
A single code valid for 10 packets sent to a single IP address, or 30 seconds, whichever expires first.
I think the whole idea of age verification on the internet is dystopian and should be tossed in the garbage.
You may think so. I have sympathy for that viewpoint. But the idea isn't going away. Public opinion is going the opposite direction. So what now?
As an adult I just couldn't be bothered buying this again year over year, let alone even once. I'm dropping the site instead of going to the store to buy this. Guess I'd just go fully offline.
Umm...good? You'll have better mental health.
This is trivially solved with national IDs and strict liability.
Some people pushing for it are sincere. I believe keeping children away from social media or adult content online is good. But I also believe most of the existing proposals to do it dangerously erode adults' privacy. And that's the real end goal for many politicians.
Implementing a fully anonymous, pretty-good-but-not-perfect age verification system can cut the legs out from all the demands to upload ID to "protect the children". I've proposed a relatively simple one that doesn't rely on zero knowledge proofs or something else the general public can't understand.,
I'll just circumvent with a vpn which gives me more privacy not less.
If you haven't seen it in person, it is now incredibly common for children as young as 1 or 2 to be handed an iPad and driven down an algorithmic tunnel of AI generated content with multiple videos overlaid on top. I've seen multiple examples of children scrolling rapidly through videos of Disney characters getting their heads chopped off to Five Nights at Freddy's music while laughing hysterically. They do this for hours. Every day. It's truly horrifying.
Parents are just as poorly equipped at dealing with this as the children are, the difference being that at least their brains have already fully developed so that there is no lasting permanent damage.
Among people who identify as Christian in France, the ones who could be described as radical or fundamentalist are a very small minority.
Leave people to their fantasies of digital control and let them learn lessons the hard way. This is not a technical issue anyway.
Your idea is garbage.
Give me a reason why my idea is "garbage" that hasn't already been covered in the comments. I'll summarize the current comments and my responses:
1. "Age verification is censorship and evil"/"This is the parents' job, not the state's" - That's a valid point of view, and I understand where it's coming from. But IMO it's increasingly a losing one.
2. "It's not perfect/it can be circumvented by ..." - All of the same circumventions also apply to tobacco and alcohol. Everyone accepts that and the world goes on. We prosecute people who break those laws. Whatever the harms of social media and adult content, they aren't worse than literal poisons that cause car accidents and cancer.
3. "It doesn't preserve privacy because they record ID where I live" - Fix the law. Ban scanning ID where you live. I can't believe you ever accepted that for tobacco or alcohol but now's your chance.
4. "Why do I have to pay? This should be provided by the government" - Then we're back to ZKPs (not comprehensible to laypeople) and paranoia that governments are tracking you anyway. But hey, I'm not a policy or crypto expert, so I'll defer to people who are. Maybe this aspect can be improved.
5. "This requires a lot of new legislation" - Yes. Governments are already at work writing legislation for age verification. Do you want to be proactive to make it privacy forward or sit passively while they decide for us?
Dead Comment
In case it wasn't clear: multiple companies can issue tokens. Sites can choose the issuers they accept.
This setting is stored in a secure enclave and survives factory resets.
I will note that these two systems are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of ways to "think of the children" that don't trample on everybody's freedom.
Like seriously, do you really think that if currently minors can buy tobacco and alcohol using unlawful means, then your TittyTokens will somehow be magically immune to the same problem because you really really wish they would?
You can't patch this without creating some form of a central database of who exactly buys how many TittyTokens.
No I fully admit some minors will still get access to FaceTok. We accept this failure for alcohol and tobacco. We don't have internet connected beer cans phoning home when you open them, asking to scan your face.
But at least where I live, most kids aren't falling over drunk or puffing away at school bus stops. So if the system is good enough for selling actual poisons, it's good enough to limit most minors' access to online vices.
Moreover social media has network effects. If most kids aren't on it, the rest will likely not bother either.
Plus, this would spawn massive online black markets for the codes, fueled by crypto/gift cards/other shady means of money transmission.
"Children" gets the Right to march behind you unquestioningly. "Misinformation/Nazis" does the same for the Left. This is now a perfect recipe for a shit sandwich.
It's better than the fatalism in your comment IMO.
There’s so much that falls out of the social media definition. And regardless, kids are not stupid… VPNs, proxies, etc are easy to circumvent with.
Who cares if many can get around it, if the majority can't or won't, then it kills the network effects.
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then you're going to see president Hegseth using those laws to ban video games and pornography.
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HackerNews has an algorithm but it's not personalized—i.e. everyone sees the same thing.
When it is, and when your local government becomes sufficiently captured by the user surveillance industrial complex, you will need real world verification here.
Social media typically implies a website where users are sharing self-created content. If a website with comments counts a social media, than all web2.0 is social media and there's practically no distinction between the web and social media.
Pretty much everything? Not the same intent, not the same usage, not the same business model, not the same users, &c.
It’s like asking why you prevent kids from buying alcohol but don’t stop them from buying fruit juice.
There is a lot of writing on what makes “social media” particularly more harmful, and its addictive nature etc, but again, we don’t need to necessarily get into the cause and knowing it’s harmful should be sufficient.
To give an idea of how such laws might approach it, the recent New York Law requiring social media sites to display mental health warnings was written to cover sites with addictive feeds. Here's how it defined those:
> "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another:
> (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users;
> (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device;
> (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (e) the media are direct and private communications;
> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user;
(> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or
> (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.
Too much of a coordinated efforts between western countries, thus it cannot fail. The decisions have been made and your voice pretty much doesn't matter.
Source for these bans being unpopular?
The timing of this coincides with countries in particular have seen a major rise in anti-migration sentiments which have become very fashionable and popular among young men in particular as polls show a global trend of men under 30s are shifting towards right wing with women towards leftwing.
Suddenly, they decide NOW is the time to stop despite the fact that they've allowed young people to be exposed to all sorts of "dangerous content" and algorithms for decades, in the late 90s and early 2000s as teenagers we had uncensored access to the internet, warez, anarchy, shock as they have circumventions widely shared among each other today.
In short, these countries are so concerned about a civil unrest in particular between religious groups that are perceived to have "overstayed their welcome" that they are outright trying to shutdown online discourse both legitimate and exaggerated.
Europe, in particular UK, are on the brink of a major civil war as per intelligence reports and the ban for the young won't be the last but that the net would be cast even wider. It's a last ditched effort bandaid solution to keep the dam from bursting. With the backdrop of Keir Starmer's threats to extradite Americans and jail people for posting grievances against the demographic crisis, you can see where Europe and other advanced economies even in places like Korea mirror the trends, conflicts and draconian laws to buy time for the inevitable.
If we want to keep this debate going there has to be an understanding of the political context and direction that can only be realized through inference and intuition. They will never openly announce true motives as that would hinder the objective. The comments I am seeing are awfully similar to the confusion and fierce debate I see around wrestling control of TikTok, which have largely been blamed on China, but the concern around uncensored videos of atrocities committed in the middle east reaching hundreds of millions of young people that has shifted steadfast opinions of a certain country which for decades were positive, now show significant departure among age brackets within the same political camp which shocked a lot of old people from that same side.
Perception is everything and the question "asking for a source on if these bans popular" completely misses the mark and irrelevant, rather the more interesting question is,
"will these bans that limit freedom of information and speech escalate and proliferate in the near future and whether France, Australia, Korea is just the start?"
" will the countries reviewing ban like new zealand, greece, canada invite more countries to join the trend?"
" why are these bans being accelerated in countries that have seen a large wave of migrations that are causing major frictions?"
Plus, we saw that in Australia that the lobby behind the ban was in fact an ad agency that makes ads for gambling apps.
Here is France, the ban is probably just a way to avoid legislation against companies selling crap that isn't for kids like vape pens and sports gambling apps.
If you think social media is harmful, wouldn't it be good to regulate social media? What does regulating French (or Australian, or wherever) citizens have to do with it?
There doesn’t have to be one.
> If you think social media is harmful, wouldn't it be good to regulate social media?
Literally what a ban for under-15-year-olds is.
It's usual to say that MPs are old people that don't understand current technologies, but in law preparation committees they appear to be well aware; in particular, they mentioned a "double-anonymity" system where the site requesting your age wouldn't know your name, and the entity serving age requests wouldn't know which site it is for. They are also aware that people walk-around age verification checks with e.g. fake ID cards, possibly AI generated.
I'm not sure if it is actually doable reliabily, and I'm not sure either that the MPs that will have to vote the law will know the topic as well as the MPs participating in these committees.
I would personally consider other options like a one-button admin config for computers/smartphones/tablets that restricts access according to age (6-14, 15-18) and requiring online service providers to announce their "rating" in HTTP headers. Hackers will certainly object that young hackers could bypass this, but like copy-protection, the mission can be considered complete when the vast majority of people are prevented from doing what they should not do.
Alternatively one could consider the creation of a top-level domain with a "code of content" (which could include things like "chat control") enforced by controlling entity. Then again, an OS-level account config button could restrict all Internet accesses to this domain.
Perhaps an national agency could simply grant a "child safe" label to operating systems that comply to this.
This type of solutions would I think also be useful in schools (e.g. school-provided devices), although they are also talking about severely limiting screen-time at school.
For the french speakers, see:
[1] https://videos.assemblee-nationale.fr/video.17950525_6942684...
[2] https://videos.assemblee-nationale.fr/video.17952051_6942761...
The ban doesn’t need to catch every single case, it just needs to add enough friction to stop the most frequent and destroy network effects.
Irresponsible parents are irresponsible parents, and they can do much worse than letting their children wander on the Net alone. IFAIK no law at least here forbids parents from giving alcohol or tobacco to their children, even though it is forbidden to sell those products to them. Toxic social media are mostly the same.
Although the topic is a ban, I think the idea is less about forbidding and punishing, and more about helping - albeit in questionably manner according to some - helping parents with "regulating" the access of their children to the Net. Of course, the easy answer is to recommend giving them dumb phones instead of smartphones, but really a smartphone is too useful to be ignored around high-school age.
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It protects privacy while being as robust as any other existing age restriction method.