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.
(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.
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.
OP already gave you your answer, you just chose to ignore it
Messaging, calls, maps, notes but no way to take or view images. Marketed simply from a global brand.
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.
that's not even true for adults. Why would you assume it's true for kids?
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.
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.
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.
It's not difficult.
Her and her friends don't need social media.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Because of what that ban entails that the others don't.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
Apparently parenting "its too hard", you "dont know how hard it is", and the alternative of "not having kids" is somehow impractical.
"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”."
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. 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
The representative study isn't published yet. The provisional headline 90% number is.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/educatio...
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.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/03/pornhub-owner-pays-5m-sett...
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/09/03/porn-company...
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/entertainment/2020/12/15/po...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/opinion/pornhub-children-...
https://fightthenewdrug.org/mindgeek-sued-for-reportedly-hos...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Information_Pol... Context of FIPR
Also these law makers don't want their kids on social media.
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?
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.
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.
Again, not a parent, but isn't making difficult decisions in the best interests of your child the entire gig?
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).
"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.
> "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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Would it be combined with the California-style OS age header?
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).
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
It's the same fight with yet another face; we must keep pushing back at the hydra.
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.