Comment by jtuple

The Internet itself is the loophole in this analogy.

Minors shouldn't have unfettered + unsupervised access to the Internet, that's the solution.

The open Internet isn't a kid friendly place, isn't meant to be, and won't be no matter how many laws you pass.

Children grow up to become adults, and spend most of their lives as adults. It's important to weigh the lifetime cost of safety laws.

A child with unfettered access to the Internet at say 8 years (IMO, way too young should be 15+) is only protected for 10 years. Then goes on to spend ~60 years negatively impacted, fighting ever growing censorship and risking extortion/blackmail when data leaks. It just doesn't seem worth it in this case.

I'd much rather laws mandate special child-safe phones/laptops that could only access a subset of the Internet, rather than forcing every website/app to collect PII and inconsistently enforce age verification for all visitors for all time.

And all of this is besides the point anyway. Social media and cyberbullying are the real threats to minors online. Porn access isn't good, but it's not causing suicides and mental health crises left and right.