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Comment by areyouseriousxx | Hacker News Reader

What you are saying is essentially that all restrictions based on age are invalid because some people will manage to circumvent those rules.

We have significant, long term, data that age restrictions reduced the use of alcohol and tobacco.

What has changed, in the modern era of internet age restrictions, is that the enforcement of age restrictions online has been reduced.

For example, online pornography has massive numbers of users under 18, but there has been little enforcement by law enforcement agencies.

The solution is quite simple. If a person under the age of 18 is in possession of an application that is prohibited for minors and the company that creates that application fails to verify their age, then the company should face criminal charges, just like we do with tobacco and alcohol.

To say that age restrictions do not work is to ignore almost a century of public policy.

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> We have significant, long term, data that age restrictions reduced the use of alcohol and tobacco.

Asking for a user's age and giving a dropdown that lets the user select any age they like is in no way comparable to checking an actual government-issued ID.

thats his entire point

Do you realize that you are asking for mandatory proof of identity with government issued ID for every social platform?

Because that's the only way to make this happen.

I'm simply stating that it is indeed possible to restrict online content based on age. When you buy alcohol or pornography at a store, you are required to show identification. I'm not sure why that is suddenly a terrible thing to do when that service is provided over the internet.

With regards to social platforms, I think we need to consider the health of people under 18, just like we do in the real world. If we indeed decide as a democracy, that certain types of social media content are significantly harmful to children, then I think it is our responsibility as adults to impose certain things upon ourselves that may be uncomfortable.

I have gone to the beach and realized that I had left my wallet(and ID) in the car and was unable to purchase alcohol or be let into a bar. We as a democracy have decided that is a reasonable price to pay for protecting children from alcohol abuse.

If age verification were required to access online content, plenty of online services would be available as a third party to verify your age without requiring you to show every website and application your government ID. For example Apple might verify your age and relay that to a website. Or possibly your credit card company or some other new company which provided that service. PayPal for age verification.

I should qualify that I'm not sure we should impose these age restrictions on social platforms, I'm am instead commenting on the feasiblility of such an action.

Irl i had access to porn and alcohol without any ID. kids are smart.

> CONCLUSIONS: The preponderance of evidence indicates there is an inverse relationship between the MLDA[minimum legal drinking age] and two outcome measures: alcohol consumption and traffic crashes. [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12022726

The costs are different in the internet. At a bar, a human looks at your ID, then gives it back to you. On the internet, there's no way your ID doesn't get recorded in a log somewhere, in a central store where all ID checks you ever do get recorded.

Not sure what country you live in, but in the US only someone who gave or sold the alcohol/tobacco to a minor would get in trouble.

Correct, but in the case of a website or a phone application, the producer of the application or website is also the provider. There is no reason why a pornography site could not be held criminally responsible for distributing pornography to minors.

The way we enforce this with alcohol and tobacco is that law enforcement runs a test were they attempt to purchase alcohol or tobacco from a store with a minor. Law enforcement can run a similar process where they attempt to access pornography(or other age restricted content) and if the site or application fails to restrict usage, apply crimial charges.

There is certainly public debate as to if we should use age restrictions on certain features of Facebook, but to say that enforcement is impossible, seems to contradict the data we have with other age restrictions.

And yet, kids still drink and smoke. Yes, age restrictions are foolish and invalid, century of public policy notwithstanding. Not every policy that has existed should continue to exist.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12022726

Some kids still drink and smoke, but far far fewer than once did. At least some of that is related to age restriction.

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