That's the cynical view, yes, but we can see educational standards and performance going down in the United States, we have seen plenty of scientific and medical studies showing problems with children and more specifically teenagers using social media. I'm not one to want to want to limit someone's rights, but it seems like the trade-off here is in favor of requiring age verification at least for social media companies.

Separately I still don't fully agree with concerns raised regarding social media and identification for everyone. Bots, people who are online just stirring up trouble, &c. are causing pretty significant challenges and problems for society. If you spew a bunch of racist stuff for example I think people deserve to know who you are.

And you know we do this all the time. Folks want gun registries and things like that (and I agree, as a matter of practice, but not principal) so I'm not sure why we're ok with that form of requiring identification to exercise your rights and against this one other than political priorities.