Large corporations' eagerness to implement this legislation should be a MASSIVE red flag alone. How do they benefit from this? I can think of a few ways.
Track record also shows that we can't properly do biometric data collection like this. This will end up in massive data leaks, if not people's IDs then at least faces. Congrats, you've given some scammers a full dataset for impersonating people.
Not only that, most noninvasive methods for age verification are dumb and ineffective with the AI options available today. Not to mention five or ten years.
So now you've got a vague unspecified and relatively nanny-state goal combined with ineffective and invasive methods and malicious compliance with immensely negative side effects. It is not worth it.
It's akin to wanting every restaurant that sells beer to card everyone at the entrance and store it in a database. Do we perhaps also want lists of minorities to better "protect" them?
"Oh, you bought lava cake? That's children's favourite, please show us your ID to see that you're not a child or we'll take the cake away."
there isn't unless you're a neurotic helicopter parent who wants to infantilize people up until they're adults.
I'm only in my early thirties but I thank god that I have a dad who bought me Doom when the store owner didn't want to sell it to me, we shocked the crap out of each other with gore sites in school and when our parents caught us looking at boobs they didn't have a moral panic because unlike now teenagers being hormonal was still considered normal
I literally pity the kids who are raised by people who give Victorian Englanders a run for their money. Forget this argument that the adults are the ones suffering under "legitimate concerns for kids", the kids are the actual losers here
And yes most people now have abandoned it, that's exactly what I'm complaining about. Not just with their kids mind you but even with themselves, that's why we have people in their late 20s and 30s who talk about how they're learning "adulting". Like, we have an entire generation now of people well into adult live who act like angsty teenagers because what they should have learned at 14 they learned ten years later
There are extremely popular movements that claim to stand for their members, but in reality just induce massive paranoia and fear.
It is extremely popular to accuse people of being the worst possible based on little to zero information or to actively twist the values and principles of the "opponent" into their opposites.
I can find the same mental health degrading content you claim is widespread on social media in the form of books, except the difference is someone spent months of their life writing hundreds of pages about it, which personally scares me more than someone dumping their 10 minute hot takes behind a pseudonym.
In this brief choice of words you've revealed that you're just guessing at what the actual problem is. There's a good book about it mentioned upthread; I recommend it.
Haidt argues that social media platforms are designed to be addictive, leveraging variable reward schedules and constant novel stimuli (likes, notifications, new content) to continually trigger dopamine release. This overstimulation of the brain's reward system, which is heavily mediated by dopamine, can lead to several negative consequences.
This constant seeking of instant, shallow rewards trains the brain to crave immediate gratification, making it more difficult for young people to engage with activities that require sustained attention, effort, and delayed gratification, such as reading a book, focusing in school, or building deep real-world relationships. The constant overstimulation can lead to a dysregulation of these pathways, making it harder for individuals to feel motivated by or find pleasure in less stimulating, everyday activities, thus contributing to feelings of boredom, apathy, and a diminished capacity for sustained attention and effort.
If the same exact content were revealed to the user in response to the user's making an effort, undergoing some danger or exercising patience or forbearance, the adverse effect described above would not occur: what causes the adverse effect is stimulation and gratification that requires almost no effort, no risk, no waiting and that is constantly available (even for example when the user is standing in line or riding on a crowded train).
The same thing is true BTW of the effect of porn on the young mind: if a boy can persuade a girl to show him her body, that experience will not tend to damage the boy even if he sees exactly the same thing he would see if he watched a porn video because it almost always requires significant effort to persuade a teenage girl to take off her clothes: among other things, the boy would need exhibit some degree of consistency and predictability in his behavior (exercising his frontal lobes) and to show that he cares about her at least to some minimum standard, which will probably entail learning and remembering many things about her and her recent experiences.
Almost everything in life that is pleasurable or exciting requires significant effort, danger or waiting, not just persuading a teenage girl -- or at least that was the case before the widespread availability of paperback novels, newspapers, comic strips, easily affordable distilled alcohol and drugs, radio, movies, pornography, television, the internet, social media and smartphones.
what fascinates me most, is when people dont realise this.