Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank | Hacker News Reader

Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

computerweekly.com

215 pointsrobtherobber197 comments

"with nine out of 10 parents saying they are in favour of a ban in response to a government consultation"

I wonder why those 90% of parents don't cut their children off from social media right now.

They have the power to do it.

Yeah, this I will seriously never understand. When I was a kid, if my mother didn't want me doing something then she would make sure I couldn't do it. Is nobody parenting their children anymore? Do they just let them do whatever they want these days? I've got a 2 year old of my own and can't imagine just handing him an iPad and ignoring him all day like I see other parents do. I can't tell if it's laziness, or ignorance, or some combination of the two.

Uh-huh. For me, that meant that I didn't do something At Home, and was pretty much unsupervised other places. My mother was strict at a time when a lot of kids had freedom. I couldn't do much that other kids did. When I could, I had to jump through hoops.

I lied to my mother a lot. My mother still isn't in the loop with my life - I'm in my late 40s now. It would have been much better to have been able to talk to my parents honestly about stuff I went through. It would have been much better to talk to me about things and get honest information about dangers.

I relate to this quite a lot, to be honest. There has to be some happy medium somewhere, though.

The happy middle is you not using social media, or smartphones for that matter, in front of them. Kids scrutinize everything you say and do and will notice the discrepancy.

My parents didn't watch scary movies, eat hard candy, have sex, wander the area cornfields without supervision, or smoke pot in front of me, yet I still did it. (these were at different ages, of course)

Not doing something isn't enough. If your kids know about something, it isn't always going to matter what you do. If I were smart enough to know different folks did different things, I'm guessing other children are as well.

Co-working space coworker went once to a school to teach kids about online safety and such.

One of the exercises was to check out what you can and can't do with a locked-down smartphone. Several minutes later the kids figured out how to bypass parental controls using ChatGPT and the method spread like wildfire.

I recall defying my father's orders regularly. Teenagers who set their mind to something can be amazingly persistent. Most parents don't have the sort of resources required to control every aspect of their child's life like that. It's also harmful in the long run.

"If I see you on social media, I'm grounding you for two weeks with no phone."

You can't fix a behavior issue with tech, just like you can't fix your computer by being good.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48444567

Not just teens. If you are overly strict, this stuff will begin in elementary school.

My 7 year old came home crying the other day because every single person in her class has a phone except her.

I can't imagine taking it away from my older kids (14,11). They use it to chat with friends and play games with them, do homework together, make plans and share common experiences and videos.

It's not as simple as you think. You have no idea how shitty screentime is how much of a cat and mouse game it is. It's pretty easy with a two year old, you just wait and see though...

I'm reminded of a statistic I read. 75% of the time you will spend with your child happens by age 12. I think I would eschew the phones until 13, purely because I'd never get that time back. Once they're adolecents and "too cool" to hang out with parents anymore, then fine, here's your phone, don't kill yourself.

Anyway, let's not assume everyone is a parent and ruin the whole online world with rules to "protect the children" made by the same people that never arrested any Epstein clients. We know they're not doing it to protect children. Let's not even pretend they are.

That only works if the rest of the parents in your neighborhood also do it. Otherwise your kid won't be in group chats, will miss events.

I live in Israel where kids are given a phone at an extremely young age (partially because of the security situation). Teachers give homework over WhatsApp, schools announce changes to the schedule, etc.

What I'm saying is it's almost not just up to you anymore, it really depends on your circumstances.

I suspect they don't really; once you give a teen a smartphone your control over what websites they visit ends.

(you will reply "don't do that then")

But also: cutting one kid off from social networks ostracises them. The parents recognize it's a collective action problem.

Also, it is arguably dangerous to not let your teen have a phone in a time when payphones (and to a great extent landlines) no longer exist.

Not really because nearly every adult has a phone with unlimited calling, and will allow you to make a call from their phone. I don't want my kids to be someplace where there are not some responsible adults around (drunk adults are not responsible)

Note that I agree with your point overall. My kids have phones for times when they are away and might need to contact me. I'm just saying it isn't as bad as it sounds.

Not really because nearly every adult has a phone with unlimited calling, and will allow you to make a call from their phone.

This isn't very compatible with also teaching children that they can't trust the majority of adults, and that every stranger is a potential danger.

Good point - folks should stop teaching them that. If your kid is really in a sea of dangerous adults their phone won't save them anyway.

That trope is pretty dangerous in itself (there WILL be time they have to rely on the unrelated adult), and I'm pretty adamant on teaching my kids that the vast majority of adults can be trusted, instead trying to instill Tricky People in them: https://fitzroyelc.com.au/the-tricky-people-lesson-you-need-...

Thanks for that, it is a much better idea/link than the common stranger danger. It also matches better to what other groups (schools, scouts) that I know of are teaching kids.

> Not really because nearly every adult has a phone with unlimited calling, and will allow you to make a call from their phone.

that's not even true for adults. Why would you assume it's true for kids?

It is close enough to true where I live anyway. I don't know your situation.

Which part is untrue?

> and will allow you to make a call from their phone.

People can be wildly reluctant to just hand over a thousand or two dollars worth of equipment to a teenager in a busy street and hope they don't run off with it. Smartphone theft is still a thing.

When I was homeless I would just ask people to call on my behalf. If it was an innocuous message about 10-50% of people would be willing to do it. I've even gotten people (complete strangers) to make phone calls for me while I was in handcuffs and everyone thought I was the bad guy but even then they were willing to make a call. You don't ask for the phone, you ask for someone to relay the message.

> People can be wildly reluctant to just hand over a thousand or two dollars worth of equipment

Who owns a $2,000 phone which isn't insured and should they really be leaving their house?

I own a $60,000 dollar car that's insured, still doesn't mean I'm going to just let anyone use it when I depend on it.

I would assume that you cannot merely walk in to the nearest Apple car store and get a new car the same day if something bad happened to your car, so I don't really understand your statement as there is no equivalency here to exploit in your analogy.

I mean, you can go get a new car the same day, hence rental places while insurance figures everything out.

How about this, I'll pick a random day in your future while you're out doing stuff to show up and break your phone in half. How much is that going to ruin your day?

What hellscape are you living in? I have never had anyone try to trick me like that. I'm not saying theft doesn't exist in Denmark, but it is not something I have ever considered when helping a person out.

Any tourist area with a lot of people is going to be an area with potential for pick pockets and other theft of opportunity types. Even Vatican City has a crime rate often upwards or in excess of 1.5 per resident, and that's only what is officially recorded. Most people don't bother reporting a loss when there's no chance the police can do anything about it anyway.

The vatican city, having essentially no residents, would obviously be an outlier in any statistic measured against residents.

I take your point though, but I have to wonder who in their right mind would go to times square to ask to borrow a phone. Surely you'd go somewhere less busy.

>Not really because nearly every adult has a phone with unlimited calling, and will allow you to make a call from their phone. I don't want my kids to be someplace where there are not some responsible adults around (drunk adults are not responsible)

I remember about 10 or 12 years ago, I'd answer every incoming call. Many were wrong numbers (guy who had the phone number before we was, I kid you not, some sort of wine salesman... people were wanting to order crates of wine). But I'd answer. Now, not so much. I get 15 calls a day some days, all are robots. I screen through voicemail transcription most of the time, unless I recognize the number. Blocking does not good. Numbers in my area code mean nothing... a surprising number of robot calls match my own exchange number (why? what's the point?). For 3 weeks a few months ago, one even matched my own phone number but for the last two digits being transposed, but it wouldn't leave a voicemail.

I no longer have the reasonable ability to answer strange phone numbers. If it were just mean, I'd chalk it up to some idiosyncratic neurosis and be quiet, but my own impression is that everyone else is doing the same thing. We not only tore down the old POTS network, we got rid of all the norms around it.

10 years ago I was wondering if things would reach that point. However these days I almost never get junk calls and so I answer the phone again. I guess our experience is different.

Is your phone company blocking them?

I have phone numbers in an area code that just seems to get flooded with spam calls. Even our unpublished numbers get them so it doesn't seem like directed attacks, just broadcast spam.

It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know. There have been enough complaints that I'd expect everyone to do some blocking.

The alternative networks have solved this problem for me. I don’t get spam calls on Signal or WhatsApp though WhatsApp and Telegram do both have a spam text problem.

I also have a phone number from a different area and I blocked that area code and everything near it.

> a surprising number of robot calls match my own exchange number (why? what's the point?).

The robocallers have found that if the fake caller id given matches the area code and exchange of the number being called, that more of the recipients are willing to answer.

And from a robocaller's perspective, getting folks to answer is critical to being able to transfer them to someone in the scam boiler room for reaping.

Dumbphones are still a thing

I really don’t know why there isn’t a brand that’s capitalising on this.

Messaging, calls, maps, notes but no way to take or view images. Marketed simply from a global brand.

Because of the ostracization problem. Kids are ruthless, and failure to conform is swiftly punished.

Images are also a huge part of messaging. For memes obviously, but also other communication (here’s the flyer for the event, look what the teacher wrote on my exam, should I get this gift for mom, look what my significant other sent me — what do you think I should say?), etc.

> Because of the ostracization problem. Kids are ruthless, and failure to conform is swiftly punished.

Shocker, but those are probably not the people you are going to give a shit about after you leave school.

Shocker, but a lot of psychological damage can be done before you leave school. Do children really not have value, except as far as they become adults?

> Do children really not have value, except as far as they become adults?

Of course they do, which is why any sane (imo) parent wouldn't let their child on social media to begin with. Basically feeding your child's developing brain into the dopamine farm, along with the "it's on the internet forever" tax.

Social media is a cancer, not some bizare tool for their social or economic wellbeing or general happiness.

While I agree that the most popular social media systems have been engineered to be extremely harmful, and something I would seek to protect the children under my care from, this is unrelated to the comment I was responding to. "This won't feel important when you're an adult" is a really bad argument.

Two of mine have come to adulthood in the past 7 years. They're fine. Didn't turn purple or become social outcasts.

I knew so many kids that got into selling cigarettes, alcohol, or weed because their parents did not want to buy them things that would facilitate social integration. Most optimistically, if you don't give a kid a smart phone then they're going to mow lawns or something and get one and hide it; that scenario isn't really a bad one.

Parents need to weigh potential otracization against the cost of giving a smart device, which could be as high as ending their normal childhood development.

Personally I think no phones until 16 is a good rule.

Easier to say. Your child will just despise you for willingly making their school life hell.

I'm living it. They don't despise me, yet. My youngest just spent a rainy afternoon reading books, drawing pictures, and is now breaking out a boardgame, the horror! Hopefully they grow up well adjusted and come to appreciate the sacrifice.

Cell phone and social media addictions arn't inevitabilities they are choices.

I really hope it goes well! I’m in favour of smartphone bans, but I can see how it sucks when you’re the only one without access to it. I was a teenager once after all.

That being said, I can’t imagine myself drawing pictures, or playing boardgames every day with my friends when I was 13. Wouldn’t be happy if my parents didn’t let me play WoW/AoM with my friends. Obviously everyone is different, and I’m in no place to say you’re doing it wrong. Just trying to say how it would suck if I couldn’t do something that all my peers are allowed to do.

This all is the main reason why I support nation-wide social media bans. Would solve the issue if no kids were allowed.

I went through high school until almost 16 with no phone whatsoever. Twas fine. I remember peers around me for the most part had smartphones at the start of high school, maybe even some in middle school? I don't want to say exactly when this was for privacy, but I don't see why phoneless school living could be so disastrous. But then, I am a bit of an oddball and introvert.

I also grew up without a smartphone, but “stuff that kids talk about” happens online now. Wasn’t the case even 10-15 years ago, since you could still be part of conversations without a phone.

But yeah, I support the school-wide smarthphone bans. Not uncommon in Tokyo.

Parents need to weigh the potential bad effects of social media against the cost of otracization, which could be as high as ending their normal childhood development.

Social development is very critical during school-age years.

Do you think kids are developing socially whilst on their phones?

Most kids today go through their developmental years while using smartphones, yes. Is that quality of development affected by it? Probably also yes. Are children harmed when their parents force them into out-groups among their peers during their developmental years? Unquestionably yes.

There are other groups: scouts, football, dance, crafts, etc. Actually doing stuff in the world does not require a phone. Kids learn by doing stuff.

In general around this topic, there is a lot of post hoc rationalisation about choices already made. I've actually got a family member approaching her 30s who has spent the last 2 decades mostly staring at a screen, and has nothing to show for it. So for me the choice is easy, maybe less so for my kids.

16 is steep, at 14 I was going around by bus a lot, having google maps to track when, what and where the bus is stopping would have made an enormous difference (this is a big city, changing route due to delays is possible). I wish I had it. (I had a normal phone, smartphones didn't exist yet)

I was navigating a big city and the surrounding countryside at the age of 12 before the internet was a thing. Apps and phones are not necessary for exploration.

Your peers when you were 12 probably also didn't use transportation that required a smartphone app.

I did not say it's necessary, but it's a HUGE improvement to moving with transit. You cannot change at the last minute unless you know all the bus routes, which you can do with a map app.

It makes an enormous difference for transit.

Knowing when the bus is arriving allows you to decide to walk. Not every places has buses that arrive on time. In Rome a bus can be late by 40 minutes, in which case walking is an option, especially if you are young.

There are many brands that have tried the "phone that does less" angle. They haven't been very successful.

there is, pretty much every single smartphone brand offers parental controls

nobody stops you from limiting your kid to bunch of whitelisted apps, for instance whatsapp (it has parental controls as well), duolingo, wikipedia, phone, SMS, calculator, maps, flashlight, sudoku, chess, camera

not exactly sure why you wanna ban cameras

Payphones were mostly extinct even when I was a kid. I didn't have a cellphone either and smartphones didn't exist yet, except for the extremely rare Blackberry. But it wsn't a problem because basically every establishment around me had a landline phone I could use in an emergency. Now even landlines are extinct because just about everyone has their own phone on them at all times. Phones are easier to come by now more than ever. Kids have never been safer, even without their own phones.

Even when I was teen back in the 1980s while payphones were still going strong, they weren't everywhere you wanted them to be. My mother had a standing rule that if I was going to be out past 10pm, I had to call her to let her know. Depending upon where I was, it was often a pain to find a payphone before 10pm so I didn't get in trouble. If I had an emergency, it wasn't at all guaranteed I'd be near enough to a payphone for it to be helpful.

> once you give a teen a smartphone your control over what websites they visit ends.

Isn't it pretty easy to set up a whitelist of apps/websites kids are allowed to use?

Whether or not that's a healthy thing for your parent/child relationship is a different question.

> But also: cutting one kid off from social networks ostracises them. The parents recognize it's a collective action problem.

OP already gave you your answer, you just chose to ignore it

Not easy. Kids can bypass very easy. Like those security-theatre apps companies use - but crappier. Then, once on a site/app like Instagram or Roblox it's a whole other layer of whitelist to manage (if possible).

It's simpler to take the phone away. And iPad. And stop hanging out with your friends that have it.

Phone management is hard to solve for pre-teen and teens.

It's like taking heroin away from an addict. They hate you for helping.

on iOS this is basically impossible

Using the built-in Screen Time tools, yes. Qustodio works pretty well though as an add-on product. Not perfect UX, not perfect functionality, but it's the best I've found.

I also use Qustodio, and it has some pretty major rough spots, imo. ScreenTime does as well.

They are both very bad at things like my kids listening to Spotify with the screen off.

Qustodio also has no way to mark an app as "allowed even when they run out of time", or "this app doesn't count towards screen time" (like Spotify, for example).

Then on the PC it gets MUCH worse. I want tracking and blocking on my PCs for my kids' profiles, but if ONE kid runs out of time, ALL the PCs lock everyone out. No message, either. Just bounced to the login screen. Took me like a whole day to figure it out.

So does grounding a kid, so I guess parents shouldn't do that either unless all parents collectively agree to ground their children.

That's not remotely comparable. Grounding is very temporary. (not arguing in favor of social media, I'm pretty much against them, but I'm quite interested in how to deal with their existence)

Are you arguing that if something is fine as a deliberate punishment it's fine full-time? If that's not your point I can't figure it out.

Quite a twist, no? This generations of parents are telling their children "Well all your friends are jumping off a bridge, so you need to as well."

The generations of parents who came up with the original bridge hypothetical also worked to have the government ban alcohol and cigarette sales to minors.

You can order cigars, loose tobacco and rolling papers, and wine straight to your house without any ID check, all completely legal. I did it as a minor and you can still do it today (well today you can also add "CBD" on to that list). The truth is there is no meaningful controls on teenage minors getting access to tobacco and alcohol. The limitations used are just window dressing for Karen to pretend like the government is doing something.

They should (and frequently do) require ID for delivery. The postal carrier will literally check ID before delivering the package. It costs about $8 extra. Any company that’s not using these services is exposed to some dire consequences if/when ATF comes knocking.

In practice USPS carriers everywhere I've lived completely ignore the check and drop it straight in the box. Good luck getting the government to prosecute themselves, particularly when ATF needs USPS for investigations against private individuals. And AFAIK, since the carrier requested to check the ID has no idea what's actually in the package, there's no mens rea to even prosecute them.

It's a legal loophole where the seller requests the check but the person delivering it has no binding liability to do so and they simply will not because it takes extra time. The economics practically guarantee the check won't be performed and the interface mechanics of carrier-seller means there's no practical way to prosecute either party when the carrier doesn't perform a requested ID check.

For most of the time these laws have been in place--since the late 1800s--you had to buy alcohol and tobacco in person. You couldn't bypass the law through shady Internet dealers.

Mail order tobacco has been a thing since practically the mail existed.

https://www.periodpaper.com/cdn/shop/products/EM2_315_1200x1...

The last time I ordered some tobacco a major, non-shady, licensed vendor literally had USPS pick it up and drop it straight in my mailbox.

Mail order back then involved checks or money orders, which minors would not have had easy access to, or cash on delivery, which would have involved an interaction with a postal deliveryman.

Moreover, the point of these laws isn't to prevent any particular illegal sale. It's to eliminate the market and reduce the volume. In-person, cash transactions are difficult for parents to track. But most kids aren't going to risk their parents finding credit card charges from mail-order alcohol and tobacco vendors. If a large fraction of kids were actually using that loophole, then enforcement of those laws would be a higher priority, like it is with in-person sales.

Product bans do, in fact, work. For example, sports betting has skyrocketed since the Supreme Court overturned a ban on online gambling: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/01/sports-bettin....

Don't do it then. :)

It's not hard. If they need to be contacted get them a dumb phone. And yes, my kids will miss out. They will miss out on their attention span being destroyed, their ability to critically think destroyed, body issues, radicalization, horrible influences, etc... My children will miss out on all that and I'm very glad that will be the case. I'm not sure why other parents are rushing to destroy their kids brains but that's their choice.

Or they’ll be mildly resourceful and pickup a cheap Walmart phone, or a friend’s old phone and learn that they can’t be open with you.

I ran a summer camp for teenagers. They know how to get around that stuff if they want. They know how to hide it from their parents to keep access.

You’ll do far better to explain how these things are harmful, and help them make decisions that are healthy.

Below a certain age I’m sure it works for a time, but you will eventually have to find a balance.

That’s why parents want bans. Their kids are going to go where the other kids are. If they are all banned on instagram, they won’t care about finding a way onto a platform where none of their friends are.

This is always the response. I'm not an idiot. I understand kids will do things to break the rules. The point is, it won't be something they have access to constantly. If they see a phone at a friend's house that's fine.

>You’ll do far better to explain how these things are harmful, and help them make decisions that are healthy.

Yes. And the healthy decision is to not have a phone. That's like saying I should let my kid eat ice cream for dinner every night but talk to them about how it's better to eat healthy. I'm a parent. It's my job to make some decisions for my children.

It sounds like you have a plan!

Best of luck.

Sucks that we’re stuck as parents running an experiment on children where the only beneficiaries are corporations, and there is no correct answer.

I can smell the reply of someone who doesn't have a teenager from a mile. Yes, you will do everything right. Yes, your kids will be perfect. Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.

> But also: cutting one kid off from social networks ostracises them.

2 of my 3 have never touched social media are are healthy, functioning adults with jobs and friends.

FOMO chasing Jones family bullshit.

Maybe legally banning minors from smartphones instead of from arbitrary websites is the better idea.

You fail to understand just how good kids are at getting around restrictions. This despite having been a kid yourself who would have found ways around it.

Often we don't really have the power we want either. It is easy to say ban everything. However realistically that isn't the correct answer, too much school work really is on devices - often provided by the school so I can't lock them (except for the limited controls the school gives to us - if the correct app works on our devices that then we are expected to have). Every week some new hole in their block app gets spread around school - until the school figures it out and blocks it all the kids have it.

The only think unique about the above is devices. I guarantee if you go back 3000 years in history you will find parents complaining about their kids in similar ways.

There are more angles on this, not exactly easy. The easiest way to make a kid to do something, is to forbid that very thing.

If you are the one cutting it off, while your kid's whole school is very much up to date with latest brainrot content, then you still lose.

Your kid is the outcast, while it will be exposed to it anyway, through peers. Meanwhile you are the bad one, making it much harder to have an actual conversation on the topic.

I am vividly interested in this, as my kid is growing up. I hear how a bit older kids play and what they talk about on the playground and feel that I have very little time left to react (kid is still just now starting to show interest in phones and such). A ban on all social media for kids would make this so much easier.

You're a parent. Be the bad guy if you feel it's right.

Wanting the government to levy a society-wide information tracking system because you don't want your child to be upset at you is incredibly selfish.

Your response is incredibly ignorant. You force your kid to be excluded if they don't have a phone. They're disconnected from friends, group chat, and common experiences.

You don't have a problem with age verification for drivers license, or buying a gun, or buying alcohol. Why is social media so different?

> Why is social media so different?

Because of what that ban entails that the others don't.

I mean, we already have corporations levying a society-wide information tracking system that they just sell the government information from, so there's that.

With this said, if the government doesn't ban cellphones/tablets at school all of your blocking kids at home from electronics is fucking useless.

My daughter pulled this crap as a teenager where we banned her from social media... so she got an old tablet from a friend and setup all new accounts. It was only months later that we caught her at it.

Kids are way more resourceful than you think.

Of course they pull that kind of crap. Teens are often plenty smart, just generally naive to consequences.

They'll do this kind of stuff even if we require spybotting the entire internet. Kids already lean on sketchy older siblings or friends or stolen/fake credentials to acquire booze illegally. Getting them to sign up for and verify online accounts would be next. Or paying/doing favors for random sketchy adults. Or buying them online, as the original article mentioned.

Anything more than the equivalent of "mark this device account as being PG/PG-13/Adult" isn't buying more security for kids, just more intrusion into the lives of everyone else, while pushing access into a black market that will create new dangers for the kids entering into it.

A device flag enabling an http header indicating a device account is "PG-13" could still allow a kid to sign up to non-adult sites online, but then have appropriate restrictions on usage etc applied to the accounts. Kids can access their friends, maybe the media cuts off during school hours, but they don't feel the need to escape the system, and are more likely to stay within it.

Requiring invasive overbearing authoritarian systems be put in place with the excuse of saving the children won't accomplish the stated goal, just the unstated one.

Network effects from the other side:

If one parent forbids their child then their child becomes a pariah. If no child is able to access social media then they will all interact without it. So yeah, a parent needs their peer's children to also not use social media so that their child is not left out.

In general I'm against age based bans. I think there are alternatives where we would identify and just generally regulate the harmful features of social media. In the meanwhile, I feel empathetic towards the difficulties of parenting in this era.

> alternatives where we would identify and just generally regulate the harmful features

Good point. The age ban is based on the idea that it is worse for kids (and other exploits) when the big idea is that it is bad for everyone, just moreso for kids. Might as well protect the whole populace when one change of the app design will do that.

Alcohol and cigarettes are bad for you but we've decided that when you turn 18 you have the freedom to ruin your own life. (But not with LSD, for some reason)

We fear that these drugs have developmental impacts but beyond that we also forbid them in restaurants and indoor environments quite generally even for adults. So adult usage is tolerated in their own home or in the outdoor public environment (although some further restrictions apply here).

I am sympathetic to the idea that social media may also have social development impacts separate from their negative social impacts, but my experience in life is that actually people appear to socially degenerate with overexposure. Thus we probably need some regulation analogous to forbidding smoking in restaurants but for social media or limiting gambler's access. But indeed, maybe on top of that we also need bans for minors.

My 13yr old granddaughter has an iPhone that is locked down by her dad using the apple tool.

It's not difficult.

Her and her friends don't need social media.

If I did that to my 13yrs old, she would not know about when her friends are organizing to meet up. Simple as that. They usually agree on going to visit one of them or local center in chat group. And since they are young, it is all spontaneous "lets go now" kind of thing.

A kid that cant use a phone will sit home alone while others meet up. And I am actually glad my 13 years old has friend group she does in person things with.

If only there were some way to use a phone to contact people, without going through a social media platform.

1.) What is the exact way to contact people via phone if those people do not have phone?

2.) And yes, organization among 12 years old means that someone writes "lets do X" and other write back "cool". Those available show up. Those not available sometimes talk back and negotiate different time.

3.) If 5 12-16 years old kids organize in a group chat, not being on that chat means missing out spontaneously organized actions. Even if they are unusually serious and recall to call your parents instead of just jumping into action, you are not there to have input into agreements. So, the meetup will be when you are not available and it will be too late for you.

4.) And yes, even among adults, if others have to jump through special hoops to join you specifically whereas everyone else does not have such requirement ... you will miss out.

Yes, 12-14 years old act on impulse and organized spontaneously without creating org chart around it. That means forgetting to do extra steps so that people not being in chat even know what you are about to do.

This statistic comes from here -- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/parental-support-... -- a preliminary analysis of the consultation. The headline statement is:

    "Of the parents and carers of children aged 21 and under who responded to Question 12 on the full-length version of the consultation, 89% supported “a legal requirement for social media services to have a minimum age of access”."

However, what the government (and the media) are _NOT_ reporting is that the consultation also paid an independent firm to undertake a nationally representative survey of adults in the general population. The above document acknowledges this itself, by stating:

    Caveats and limitations

    Users should note the following when interpreting these results: 
    Self-selecting sample

    The consultation was open to anyone who chose to respond. The results reflect the views of parents and carers who were motivated to take part, and are not representative of parents and carers nationally. As with any open public consultation, respondents may differ systematically from the wider population in their views and characteristics. 
    Question routing

    These questions were only presented to respondents who wanted to respond to Chapter 2: Interventions for safer, more positive experiences. All questions in this section were optional. Finally, Question 13 was only presented to respondents who answered “Yes” to Question 12 (i.e. those who supported a legal requirement for a minimum age of access in principle). The 96% figure therefore relates to the level of agreement with a minimum age of at least 16 among those parents and carers who opted to respond to this Chapter and already supported some form of minimum age requirement. It does not represent the views of all consultation respondents, nor all parents and carers who responded.
    Full consultation only

    The figures relate only to the full-length version of the consultation, not the streamlined parents’ and children’s consultations.

Status of results

   These figures should be treated as provisional. A comprehensive analysis of all consultation responses will be published separately.consultation, respondents may differ systematically from the wider population in their views and characteristic

So, it's 90% of 9499 parents who specifically went out of their way to respond to a consultation widely heralded as being predetermined and about blocking access to social media. For context, in the 2021 census (massively disrupted by covid) there were 11.5 million schoolchildren and full-time students whose parents were the target of the survey.

The representative study isn't published yet. The provisional headline 90% number is.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/educatio...

Has been discussed here again and again.

Apparently parenting "its too hard", you "dont know how hard it is", and the alternative of "not having kids" is somehow impractical.

Most parents probably don't think, and just say an automatic yes when it comes to governmental restrictions. I am not sure why that is so - they are probably happy with their assumptions about how the world works, so they are fine with governments being restrictive in general.

denying smartphone basically makes your kid an outcast, which might be fine for some kids, not fine for others, but ignoring that, the school basically requires smartphones, even uses apps to open the lockers, or to communicate about group projects.

apple's parental controls are total joke, per app blocks are not good at all, what you want is content type blocks, which of course is impossible.

example: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254480754?sortBy=rank

> They have the power to do it.

Do they? It seems like schools are pushing tech and "ed-tech" in schools pretty hard while being typically incompetent at actually controlling how students use it[1].

Some choice exerpts:

> Lisa Sunbury is a professor of early childhood education in Santa Cruz, California, and she had a child at Mission Hill Middle School. Her 7th grade daughter has a set of serious issues that require an IEP. Lisa did her part at home, enforcing the low-screen policy. One element of this plan was supposed to be minimal access to school devices and a clear requirement that the device be inaccessible outside of certain classes. This was all on doctor’s orders.

> Yet, Sunbury would regularly find her daughter awake at 3am, playing video games on the school Chromebook that she wasn’t supposed to have. She discovered a prohibited TikTok account, made on the school device, with dance videos posted from gym class using that same device.

> Beverly Hyde, a parent in Concord, North Carolina, was explicitly told that if her son wasn’t going to use his Chromebook, “he will just sit alone and spend the day doing nothing.”

> And this was no empty threat. Linda in Texas discovered that while her doctor-ordered opt-out request for her 2nd grader was technically being honored, the school wasn’t providing any alternative instruction. They were just “having her sit and draw while the other kids were online.”

[1] https://www.persuasion.community/p/inside-the-anti-tech-rebe...

That's like arguing against bans on alcohol and cigarette sales to minors because parents "have the power" to ban it for their kids themselves. There is a role for the state to help parents socialize their children properly.

That does not mean that these parents understand the technical aspects of it.

e.g. How effective it will be: less than they might think, software is not infallible magic

What the side effects might be - more than they might think - excluding the underage means verifying the age of everyone.

So articles like this aim to raise awareness, all of this is clearly spelled out in the article.

Are you a parent?

I believe we could solve a lot of these problems by making it illegal to advertise to minors.

I'm reminded of the settlement with Facebook where it was illegally allowing racial targeting in ads for housing, which is illegal [1]. If platforms were suddenly liable for allowing or failing to stop the targeting of minors, they'd suddenly have a lot of incentive to figure this out.

The beauty of this is that they already do it. Your profile with FB, Google, etc has a lot of implied demographic information based on your activity because they want to sell audiences with certain demographics.

As an aside, whenever I see "think tank" my first question is "who is funding this?" and I learned something I didn't know previously. In the UK, these bodies often aren't legal charities. Instead they are non-profit companies limited by guarantee [2]. One consequence of that is that they don't have to reveal their funding like a 501(c)(3) would (and, yes, US think tanks are generally 501(c)(3)s).

I didn't see any obvious red flags in the trustees for Foundation for Information Policy Research for what it's worth and it's an almost 30 year old organization.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

[2]: https://www.funded.team/advice/charity-vs-cic-vs-clg

How would you know if someone was a minor? Facebook knows even if you don't tell them, but I don't.

Would it be combined with the California-style OS age header?

Google, as one example, uses a bunch of information including profile information and behavioural data in sophiticated ML to imply demographics [1]. This is what I mean when I said they already do it.

The suggestion I'm talking about doesn't "solve" the adult content issue. It's more targeted at social media, which I think is the bigger problem. If it's illegal to show minors ads and advertisers can't target minors then you've just removed the economic incentives.

Youtube tends to be included in age verification legislation. Personally, I would be happy if you simply limited advertising and (IMHO) you dind't show commetns.

Roblox I think is on the right path here, at least in theory. Roblox segments users such that you can only interact with people one segment above or below you. The issue with social media (again, IMHO) is in big part that minors can interact with adults and vice versa. Really you want more of a sandbox so people can't prety on children.

[1]: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383?hl=en

You assume they are a minor unless you have proof otherwise, e.g. billing information. This whole mess comes from advertising economics, which don't need to exist.

Nearly no one is buying things online anonymously with crypto currencies. ID verification is simply a non issue in a world where you actually pay for things. So start making the advertising model illegal (which it should be for its price dumping market distorting effects anyway).

I suspect the easiest way would be to ban advertising things designed to appeal to children, which is content-based rather than reader-based and cuts with the grain of some previous restrictions in the UK (no junk food ads on children's TV, for example, no tobacco add at all). It's intent-based and so less gamable, and would tank the value proposition of British kids online, if enforced, by lowering the CPM rate.

I'm not convinced it's a good idea, FWIW, but it would be a lot less crappy than age verification.

This is by far the best solution and should be the top comment.

Why is the onus on the parents to chase after their kids - screen time is awful and kids get around it.

The social media and porn sites should be penalized and the onus should be on them. Just like when we were kids, the channel couldn't show certain content like nudity and cursing or they'd be fined.

How is it suddenly the obligation of the parent to supervise a million options with horrible interfaces.

Unless you make age verification and age assurance illegal with massive fines that are larger than your proposed fines, that is a terrible idea.

You're right to be concerned about thinktank-washing, but FIPR themselves are fine: one of the academic:policy bridge groups rather than an astroturfing organisation funneling dark money.

I don't always agree with their stuff, but they're good faith actors.

https://fipr.org/20260526-GrowingUpInTheOnlineWorld.pdf Actual response, instead of an article reporting on an article reporting on a response.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Information_Pol... Context of FIPR

People are worried about tech companies collecting data on minors, so they ban tech companies from collecting data on minors. Tech companies rally behind "Age Verification" laws so they can collect data on minors again under the guise of protecting minors. The people who don't understand why that's a bad thing count it as a win and we're right back where we started.

Yes. It's astounding how stupid average voter is.

We're not right back where we started, we're in far far worse place where all online activity of every single person is de-anonymized (associated with their full legal ID). Tech companies are salivating at the thought.

True, why settle for less data when they can justify getting it all.

We need a law that prevents representatives without a demonstrable understanding of a subject matter from casting votes for stuff they clearly don't understand. Can't check your email or program a microwave clock? No voting on Internet bills. Can't change your own oil? No voting on automotive bills, etc.

Now a lot of people would immediately say "Oh, but then nothing will get done!" and my response is, okay, good. After a few years of nothing getting done people will realize they need to start voting in people who know about the stuff the people care about instead of people who will listen to whatever a lobbyist tells them.

If you make law-abiding sites like Pornhub hard to access, consumers will move to black markets like the Dark Web, which hosts illegal content.

As the article mentions, kids are able to bypass the age verification with ease, so it doesn't even fulfil its stated purpose. We didn't even need age verification, because parental controls have been an option the entire time.

It's not about the children, never was.

The goal is to use one ID system for everything.

I sound like Alex Jones, but we already have a system for bank login, and other trusted identity login. They want to use this for everything.

I think it's rather that they want to de-anonymize internet users by linking all activity to one or more identifiers.

An IP address only links you to a physical address, at best. Account requirements with identity verification link the user's real-world identity via government ID, credit card, or face photo.

It's both. Most people want to protect children, some other people (concentrated among the rich and powerful) see this and use it as an excuse to push surveillance.

This is already reality in Finland. Want to schedule a doctor's appointment? Bank ID. Want to pay your taxes? Ban ID. Want to check your pension? Bank ID. The worst part of it is that a significant swathe of the population does not have access to bank ID, so they can't access these services anymore. It's a kafkaesque dystopia that is going places that I never thought would be possible.

I am Swedish so I know.

BankID I like as it is now for authority stuff and I understand its need. The alternative would be everyone rolling their own auth and MFA, would be bad.

Now imagine all social media tied to your BankID. This is their wet dream.

I don't agree with you wrt "the alternative". Things like scheduling a doctor's visit could be done without authentication. If some authentication is needed, it could be a traditional username/password setup (no MFA). Blocking part of the population from accessing basic services is just inhumane.

Obviously? I'm shocked that lawmakers are so okay with giving up their sons' and daughters' personal information.

It's not for the Fortunate Sons, silly.

What law requires that? From what I've seen laws like the one in Utah require any account to be in "child mode" until you can prove you're an adult.

Also these law makers don't want their kids on social media.

> require any account to be in "child mode" until you can prove you're an adult.

That means unacceptable privacy violations that hurts every child and adult.

The nice solution would be <adult age="18"> content </adult> tags, standardized by w3c.

Those can only work if there is some way to ensure that everyone uses them correctly. I guarantee there will be many sites that don't - every single week the kids will discover a new one and spread it to all their friends (in their school)

Same if they find a new porn site that doesn't ask for ID check.

Bad parenting wins again while everyone else suffers.

If you wanted to actually empower parents in helping their kids, you'd make sites emit some form of standard as TXT, SRV, /.well-known, whatever end points

Then you'd make sure that the owner of the device has the ability to enable this, factoring in some tags for the category

us-min-age:21:drinking gb-min-age:18:drinking au-min-age:16:socialmedia us-min-age:13:socialmedia

Then I can use my existing parental controls (including on a linux laptop if I don't give my 13 year old root) to apply or not apply rules

If I don't want social media regardless, then I apply a rule "no scoial media". Or I can apply "1 hour max" per day for the category

If I'm happy with my 16 year old spending half an hour on playboy.com or whatever, then that's fine too -- I'd rather they went somewhere like that then some of the shadier sites

This gives no power to large companies, but helps the parents, who can apply "default" profiles -- hell you can distribute default profiles as part of the onboarding process.

Yes but that's not what this is for, it's for boiling the frog of enforcing ID checks online.

I’m pretty certain they understand that and are offering a workable solution instead of just repiping “age tech bad.”

You can't offer a workable solution to an excuse. Nobody pushing this wants to protect the children, therefore offering a solution that will protect the children is irrelevant.

While the powers pushing this aren't doing it for protecting children, there are many people who want restricting the internet to protect children. This is why it's a good cover instead of an obvious power grab, because parents want to stop their ten year old children from seeing porn or getting addicted to social media, but they don't know much about how to do it, the technology involved or who is pushing it. You might not want any child control, as many in HN don't, but in general the people do. And if you make parents choose between the current free for all and the government knowing the identity of every user, they will choose the second. Sure, the government would probably not protect the children even after requiring ID, but by then it would be too late.

I'm sorry, what?!

I have an 11yo. I know a ton of parents. And I don't know a single person - not one - who thinks this is a good idea. And I've asked.

Obviously this is just an anecdote and not a substitute for data. But... is there data on sentiment? I don't think it's actual parents who are pushing for this.

I have a 10yo. I know loads of parents too. I don't think I've ever heard the "freedom" position taken apart from on HN. To non-techies it just seems self evident we should block kids from seeing beheadings and donkey porn. They haven't usually thought much about how that would be achieved and what the knock on effects would be. But they do want it.

Yep, and the social media and other tech companies could have solved this 10 or 15 years ago on their own terms but chose to pretend that it was all just a "parenting" issue and not their responsibility. Now they are facing the heavy and clumsy hand of government regulation.

I'm a parent and will take the second option in a heartbeat.

But it's not because I'm cool with my government "[not] doing it for protecting children" or any other conspiracy theory nonsense.

It's because governments ALREADY have all this information if they want it. Most people freely log in to their favourite services, and corporations will hand over data when asked. There are vast amounts of hacked data available, which any government with a competent intelligence service has a copy of. Then there are all the existing laws and intelligence apparatus that can track people.

Age gates wont help the government find out what porn you watch, or who you message on WhatsApp, they already know if they really wanted. But they will create a social contract that letting your kids loose on social media and unfiltered internet is unacceptable. At the moment bad parents have all the power, drawing the line somewhere and enforcing it will give power back to parents that want to raise their children responsibly.

Raising a generation of kids not addicted to internet brainrot is the real way to make sure democratic governments don't overreach with the data they have.

Both groups exist. Some want to protect the children, others hop on the bandwagon to ensure that protecting the children comes alongside full mass surveillance, and we do ourselves no good by pretending the first group is the second group. Believe it or not, there are children and we are currently failing to protect them from things we need to protect them from.

Some of the citizens and nonprofits pushing it do,

and that’s what complicates the “debate” and “conversation”.

FYI for adult content, there's a standard called RTA-Label that already integrates with all parental controls and is already deployed on all major adult sites.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260215201718/https://www.rtala... seems a bother, nevermind the lack of granularity that RTA has. The competing options seem to have a Christian focus as well, from what I recall. There does not seem to be any good option currently.

Yes but isn't that limited to only tagging adult sites? That's great and it works but it only applies to a small piece of the stated problem. It seems to be largely social media that's driving popular support for this latest go round.

RTA is an excellent demonstration that a self categorization system can be expected to work provided it's standardized and service operators make use of it. What's missing then is granularity and a way to coerce the vast majority of sites to adopt whatever gets standardized.

Given the current browser duopoly coercing adoption should prove relatively straightforward. So we just need an RFC document and then to somehow gain public support for it.

Simple, sites without a rating are not viewable if parental controls are enabled. That will be motivation for site publishers to get their ratings in order.

No, the browsers would need to reject the sites unconditionally since no one is going to enable parental controls if it breaks everything. Otherwise I expect the current situation of parental controls not working and thus everyone avoiding them and complaining would continue.

Recall that this is exactly what happened with TLS. When browsers started gating all new features behind TLS being active suddenly all the mainstream sites had it working across the board in record time.

The first step is to get Google and Apple to set a date after which adoption is mandated. Provide an easy out for site operators, such as placing a text file at "/.well-known/content-rating" with "tag:all ages" inside to opt the entire site out rather than sending a header per resource or tagging html elements or whatever.

The second step is to approach legislators with this standard and a now very high compliance rate in hand and suggest that they enact a law requiring that such ratings are accurate for certain specific categories (presumably porn, gambling, social media, and user generated content).

The third step is getting governments to do spot enforcement often enough to prevent the system from falling apart.

Sounds good to me. Why didn't Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and the porn industry do this 15 years ago? Why did they pretend to have no responsibility for the content they were publishing? Why did they think clicking "Yes" on an "I am 18 years of age" popup was sufficient?

TBF porn is the only thing I can recall people really getting up in arms about previously and the major sites for that have been sending the RTA header since forever. Otherwise I think the "I am 18 years of age" fig leaf was just a nod to the law in a world where none of the legislatures had bothered to formalize compliance requirements. Really the internet of 20 let alone 30 years ago was just such a different place. I don't recall any gacha games (let alone targeted at children) or opaque recommendation algorithms that would push extremist content.

Keep in mind that for a long time online retailers in the US weren't even collecting sales tax properly and then for a while there was disagreement about which state the sales tax should go to. It seems like a computer and the network enter the mix and suddenly the IQ of everyone involved mysteriously drops to room temperature.

My impression is that the latest push involves parents wanting to do "something" but not being sure what that "something" ought to be. The legislators in turn are either in league with lobbyists who have a vested interest in online ID for one reason or another or alternatively they merely feel similarly to the parents that "something" ought to be done but they don't really have any good options. It's unfortunate but I don't think it's realistic to expect legislators to go out and have a usable web standard drawn up when one doesn't already exist.

> Why did they think clicking "Yes" on an "I am 18 years of age" popup was sufficient?

Because that is the only acceptable solution and it doesn't violate user privacy. Other than off-by-default parental controls that are optionally enabled.

Asking if you want to enable parental controls on first setup seems acceptable to me.

> Because that is the only acceptable solution

And this is how you get locked down computing

"All major adult sites" do not send RTA headers. e.g. last I checked, reddit does not. Nor does it segment adult content onto a separate domain or provide any other way to easily filter.

There is an unfortunate lack of unity for such things. It would work if governments made it easily understandable how to categorize content, but the vast majority is handled by closed boards of people, so no "case law" exists for the difficult edge cases.

Additionally, some jurisdictions have laws based around religious and cultural values which are not immediately obvious, I'm sure many webmasters would be happy to spend 30 minutes or so writing something for such a framework, but the current subsequent obligation of learning the laws of relevant jurisdictions, the decisions of age rating boards, etc. would blow things out to weeks of research and potentially quite a bit of lawyer money.

> There is an unfortunate lack of unity for such things. It would work if governments made it easily understandable how to categorize content, but the vast majority is handled by closed boards of people, so no "case law" exists for the difficult edge cases.

Who cares if some sites get it wrong? It would still be a better scenario than we have now where people either announce who they are, or they hunt for some other site that doesn't enforce age verification. At least if some sites get it wrong, then they're still better than sites that presently out-right refuse to follow all the different laws of the different lands.

> Additionally, some jurisdictions have laws based around religious and cultural values which are not immediately obvious,

The beauty of the GPs suggestion is that site owns don't need to learn that. They just submit what the site content roughly is, and parents get to chose what they want to expose their children to.

Also we already have a jurisdiction problem here were some countries, or even sub-division of such as US states, are passing law that affect the websites and software of people worldwide.

Because liability is likely to be weird in a lot of jurisdictions. I could see incorrectly tagging content as having bigger ramifications than not tagging content.

How does one know what to tag their content as, if they do not know what tags are used by the other party? A standard where every party makes up their own rules as they go along, doesn't exactly work well.

This would do nothing to prevent sending explicit content within chat apps, which appears to be a big focus at the moment.

Disclaimer: not a parent, as will soon become apparent.

Several people have made the argument that individual parents can't simply cut their children off from social media, as said offspring may be ostracised (or simply look at their friends' phones, assuming they still have any).

That argument makes sense to me, to an extent.

What I don't quite understand is the conclusion that this leaves parents with only two (equally unpalatable) options.

Parents don't have to act individually. They could act as a collective, especially within the context of a small social group.

Is that really such a naive suggestion?

Parents will get their kids phones worrying that they're missing out. The more parents do that the more the kids without phones are actually being left out. If the government puts restriction on these things than parents are much less likely to worry.

I've heard of parents of children for a certain grade getting together and all signing a pact that the kids won't have phones until a certain point, say 16. It only goes into effect if something like 75% of the parents for that grade sign on. I like that idea.

> Parents will get their kids phones worrying that they're missing out.

Again, not a parent, but isn't making difficult decisions in the best interests of your child the entire gig?

I agree with you. I plan to not be pressured by what other parents are doing. But that pressure is real and many parents end up thinking it's what's best. It's better that they have friends and a phone than neither of the two.

Imagine there's a lake with 100 fish farms. Each farm operator can pay $50000 to install a pollution scrubber that benefits every farm operator by $1000. Obviously, none of them do it, since it'd cost them $49000.

Coordination problems are why we have a government. It mandates the pollution scrubber, each of them moans a lot, 3 of them cheat, but everyone is $47000 richer in the end (except the cheaters who are $97000 richer until they get caught).

What about a "no social media accounts" pact?

> Is that really such a naive suggestion?

IMHO, yes, but that'll depend on the kid, their friends, and all the parents involved. If everyone does line up and agree, than it might be possible, but I think the reality is that kids are remarkably clever and resourceful and will find a way to access what you don't want them to. They'll do it secretly and maybe you'll find out or you won't.

My child is 18, and from about 7th grade onwards, everything important with friends happened in one of the various "group chats" for the various friend circles, sports circles, etc. These are app-based, not SMS/RCS/iMessage based. In our family, we opted for "you can use devices" but with some limits around time of day and work completeness. Phone and apps were open to review by mom and dad on demand.

When reviewing, we weren't looking to micro manage or police the conversations, but to make sure that nothing alarming was happening with respect to addiction to the media, stranger conversations, etc. And yes, random phishing, spam, and inappropriate messages did occasionally come through and provide a great opportunity to talk about how to identify the scams, and how to report the inappropriate messages.

As the kid got older and demonstrated ability to manage things, restrictions loosened, but on-demand access is still allowed with random checks every now and then. Obviously we can't see everything, but it's a balance of protection and safety vs. releasing a fully functional and independent human in the wild that can handle these things on their own.

Again, this is going to depend on the situation, the kids, and the families. My sample size of raising a child is 1, so what worked for us may not work for anyone else.

US voters are defined by their apathy. Collective action is difficult even on areas most American's agree on due to shades of grey and implementation differences.

It may be analogous to vaccine adoption, with requirements in place for all (with some exceptions).

Who sets and applies the exceptions? A state or federal agency that runs afoul of free speech issues? An AMA type public board for social media use, quickly captured by the industry they serve to regulate? Parents themselves via opt out paperwork or ignoring the regulations?

I want to see more options debated or proposed for this sort of management, starting with right to privacy and your data, harsh punishment for promoting misinformation, and disclosure of algorithms/etc on what your feed includes.

Make all fines a flat % of revenue or an otherwise real amount to companies like Meta, not just a cost of business. Maybe pay users when their data is used/sold/etc, or otherwise increase the cost of what are basically information dragnets for advertising and manipulation.

Age verification is identity verification. It puts everyone at risk.

Here’s a crazy idea. Parents should parent.

I was over for dinner with a family and their 13yr old daughter was complaining about being “grounded forever” because she snuck access to an iPad and signed up for instagram. Instagram is cancer, but. I still don’t think age verification (at the service and government level) is the answer.

"Think of the children!" - Say the 40-year-old millennials who were exposed to the Wild West of internet content as children and are still fine.

"We can't censor the internet on their devices!" - There's a $2.5B market in parental censorship software. You can censor their devices.

"Our child will become a pariah without the internet!" - In what way, exactly? They still go to school, still play sports, still go to chess club/band/theater/etc, still ride bikes around the neighborhood, still hang out at friends' houses, etc. All the kids will not hate them because their parents refused to give them a smartphone. (How do I know? I know a kid who grew up without one. Has plenty of friends.)

"But they need to be able to contact us!" - Dumbphones work fine. Teach them how to text and make calls. I guarantee they will use them.

Parents are lazy and want us to do parenting for them, not really a newsflash. But none of that is the point. "Age Verification" laws are stupid because 1) the kids will get around the verification, 2) plenty of the internet does not abide by the law, 3) it is government mass-surveillance in a "think of the children" disguise, 4) it makes privacy (surfing the web without a Government-issued ID) illegal, 5) if it's taken seriously, the only way to actually enforce it is a Great Firewall of America.

These laws are the gravest threat to personal liberty in the history of mankind. It cannot be understated how pervasive it is. At no other time in history has it been possible to not only track one's movements 24/7, but also the content of everything they read, everyone they talk to, etc, even in the privacy of their home. These laws don't work without that.

Before I respond, I want to point out that I'm against age verification as well.

> "Think of the children!" - Say the 40-year-old millennials who were exposed to the Wild West of internet content as children and are still fine.

While I'm not 40 yet: I was exposed to "the Wild West" and I was certainly not fine. And even then, I'd argue that today's social media is even more damaging for the psyche than everything I was exposed to.

> "Our child will become a pariah without the internet!" - In what way, exactly? They still go to school, still play sports, still go to chess club/band/theater/etc, still ride bikes around the neighborhood, still hang out at friends' houses, etc. All the kids will not hate them because their parents refused to give them a smartphone. (How do I know? I know a kid who grew up without one. Has plenty of friends.)

Not all communities are like this, but I have certainly seen it:

- They still go to school: Sure, but they will miss out on class group chats that, depending on the school, might be important. Or, even worse, will miss information from teachers. - still play sports/go to chess clubs/etc: Sure, unless all club communication happens over chat apps/social media and is required to join. - All the kids will not hate them because their parents refused to give them a smartphone: Maybe not. Maybe they will be because they are the odd one out (How do I know? I was the kid who grew up without the back-then equivalent)

> Say the 40-year-old millennials who were exposed to the Wild West of internet content as children and are still fine.

Prior to college, my only computer was the crappy family pc in a corner of the living room. Only had a flip-phone until college too.

That’s a completely different world than kids growing up glued to smartphones, and screens generally, from elementary school.

They are right, but this is the end goal anyway - age sniffing is all about spying on people. Children are the excuse. Usually it is either children or terrorists; these are the buzzword bingo memes used by lobbyists.

If websites can block or restrict underage users based on data they receive, bad actor websites can target underage users specifically.

To say nothing of the fact kids will obviously bypass it as well.

Why do we need age verification tech in the first place? We also don‘t have speed verification tech on the streets, but we have speed limits everywhere.

Speed cameras, police with radar/etc, self reporting via insurance apps, controlled by GPS or speed limits in vehicles, etc

The tech is there but not applied equally. Regulations could limit every car to 70mph, or the (US) state to state max highway speeds. eBikes are sort of already doing this with categories based on max speed, in some states.

Then like speed limits and (emissions) regulations, people would find ways to bypass them. Rolling coal is one example. Electric 'bikes' that are basically mopeds or mini motorcycles don't require registration or licensing in many places, or at least don't enforce it.

How much freedom is the general populace willing to stomach? These age verification laws apply to everyone but tend to only impact nonvoters (age 17 and under). People are generally apathetic (especially US voters) and may comply with the easy option before fighting and preventing any "foot in the door" for this sort of policy.

I can't use Instagram due to the ratio of ads and sponsored posts yet apparently millions are fine with it. If they can send their ID and likeness to Meta once and continue to scroll, how much will they care?

Adding layers for accountability is a good idea. It needs to start with social media itself, including preventing misinformation and disclosing algorithm/behavior nudges designed to suck people in.

> system akin to film classification age ratings

I am pretty sure that most parents let their kids watch movies that are rated for a higher age group then their current age.

For example a lot of marvel movies, harry potter or pirates of the caribbean are usually in this category.

My conclusion the parents are not lazy they care to be breaking the age restriction. A lot of parents even go out of their way or get aggressive to make sure they can age rated movies to their kids as they think the age ratings are bullshit.

I would suspect age verification to have similar effects in practice, and there is the additional hurtful factors as well leading to a net negative. Not just for minors but also for adults that now have to deal with this crap.

it's only like everybody who isn't a rube who always falls for "think of the children" has been saying this since all these new proposals and laws started coming back

It was never about the children

UK: sounds good let’s do it

Another instance of pure power games if you track the political "reasonings" and technological "solutions".

It's the same fight with yet another face; we must keep pushing back at the hydra.

The other 'side' is playing the same power games.

None of this is truly about the people (even though the sentiment is) - it's the elites vying for power against each other.

The internet is not tribal, but humans are. Those seeking to divide are pushing their hardest right now, because they know division will empower them more.

void-kampff pattern matching is failing me here

I am shocked, shocked to hear that there are ulterior motives behind age verification and that the stated benefit is in fact exactly the opposite of what happens irl. Shocked!

"The think tank warns that no age verification system, however technically secure, can prevent a motivated user from bypassing age restrictions.

The Tor Network, which is widely used by journalists, whistleblowers, NGOs, security researchers and dissidents in repressive countries to protect their privacy and security, makes blocking or age-gating virtual private networks (VPNs) a pointless and harmful exercise, FIPR argued."

If true, then how do we explain comments on HN that oppose age restrictions if these commenters are supposedly "technical" (cf. "non-technical") and understand how to use Tor

Another possibility is the opposition to age verification is not based on the opponent's own social media use, it's based on the effect that age restrictions would have on a social media _audiences_ comprised of "non-technical" people, "normies", that are the _targets_ of the opponent's activities

The arguments made by this "think tank" (read: advocacy group), similar to aforementioned HN comments, lack originality and insight and are thus not persuasive

Perhaps there are entities and/or individuals that stand to lose from age verification who not mentioned in this "study" nor in HN comments that oppose age verification who are not necessarily social media users but are engaged in _exploiting social media users_ for profit, e.g., targeting them with surveillance and ads, and taking a percentage of any revenue derived from users' work ("content creation")

Those entities and/or individuals, namely the entities running oversized "social media" websites to attract large audiences for advertising, and others who profit from this flawed "business model", must be considered in any analysis of the _potential_ effects of age restrictions

Reply on news.ycombinator.com