Let's be realistic here. All this age verification stuff is pseudoscience and more importantly it isn't tested or standardized at all. It's just theater so the creeps get all the data on your children they can.
Meta has made a killing, literally, exploiting children psychology. Social media is the orphan crunching machine for nonorphans or something.
<lightbulb moment>
Abdicating responsibility, standards and government enforcement are three of white collar America's favorite things.
Seems like an opportunity for someone to become a billionaire by creating a standardization and licensing agency and then paying for some shills to get the ball rolling. Give it 5yr and everyone will have to do business with you lest the feds kick in their door. Give it 10yr and the useful idiots will be in the comment section talking about how XYZ age verification mechanism must be good because it's "certified" by your garbage and that the sky will fall if we get rid of it.
I hope I'm too jaded, but frankly I don't think I'm jaded enough.
1 - hold the parents accountable for putting a dangerous weapon in the hands of munchkins without supervision.
2 - phone manufactures and or internet providers that sell and connect them, must include a bouncer bot system like a locked phone. The parents get to choose and change which set of bouncers filter the phones.
These can be simple like 18 and over content according to your jurisdiction block.. but I would hope they would spend time to choose multiple bouncers that block different things for different values and offer ways to request access to blocked things.
I have posted more details previously.