Of course that’s what I meant.

That doesn’t address the argument being made.

It’s entirely reasonable to worry about privacy, data collection, and government overreach. Any age-verification system creates new infrastructure for proving identity or age online, and people are right to scrutinise that. But it also doesn’t follow that every attempt at age restriction is therefore equivalent to mass surveillance or should be dismissed out of hand.

Likewise, pointing out that children will find ways around restrictions isn’t, by itself, an argument against having restrictions. Kids have always circumvented rules. The relevant question is whether a measure meaningfully reduces access or harm, not whether it is perfectly enforceable.

I also don’t think it’s accurate to frame support for these measures as inherently “dangerously stupid”. Many supporters are responding to concerns about addictive platform design, bullying, self-harm content, algorithmic recommendation systems, and the amount of time children spend on these services. You can disagree with their proposed solution without assuming bad motives or indifference to civil liberties.

Where I think the debate should focus is on effectiveness and proportionality. If age-verification systems are ineffective, easily bypassed, or require unacceptable levels of data collection, then that’s a strong argument against them.

But that’s different from arguing that any attempt to restrict children’s access is necessarily an attack on privacy or freedom.

And if we agree that major platforms have not done a particularly good job of protecting children, then “people will just use something else” doesn’t fully answer the policy question. It simply shifts the discussion to what, if anything, should be done instead.

I lt feels like there’s two separate issues: whether children should be allowed on social media, and how age verification should be implemented.

It’s perfectly reasonable to be concerned about privacy, data collection, and mission creep. Those are legitimate concerns that any age-verification scheme should address. But it doesn’t follow that because some verification methods are bad, we should abandon the goal of keeping children off social media.

The fact that platforms already prohibit under-13s isn’t much of an argument when everyone knows those rules are routinely ignored. If a law is unenforced and ineffective, pointing to its existence doesn’t solve the problem.

You also seem to assume that age verification necessarily means handing social media companies copies of passports and driving licences. It doesn’t have to. There are privacy-preserving approaches where a third party verifies age and only returns a yes/no answer. Whether those systems are good enough is a fair debate, but it’s not accurate to suggest that the only option is mass identity collection by Facebook and similar companies.

I also don’t think it’s fair to characterise supporters of these measures as advocating government overreach or surveillance. Many parents simply look at the evidence around addictive design, bullying, self-harm content, and compulsive usage among children and conclude that some form of restriction is justified. They may be wrong about the solution, but they’re not necessarily indifferent to privacy or civil liberties.

Finally, if we accept that social media companies have failed to make their products safe for children, then regulation becomes the obvious next question. Saying that platforms should design better products doesn’t tell us what to do when they don’t.

I get that many view this as government overreach, but in this case I’m OK with it. If it hurts these platforms then so be it. A 10 year old has no business being on tiktok. I’ve got kids and I can police this stuff myself, to an extent, but I’ve seen many neglectful parents who just leave their kids to their own devices (figuratively and litterally). If this prevents children being prematurely exposed to these garbage platforms then I don’t personally see the issue, but I’m open to reasonable counter arguments.

Perhaps unusually, I plan to take up gaming when I’m older, having never seriously tried it. I’m 48. I work in IT and I’m a nerd for retro computing, but beyond 16-bit platform shooters and Lemmings, I have barely dipped my toe into gaming culture. At work, I feel like an Irishman who’s never tried Guinness.

I’ve avoided it for two reasons. One is a mental block: a strange and unjustified prejudice against gaming culture. In 90s rural Scotland, where I was raised, you had to fight hard for your place in the social pecking order. I enjoyed football, but my friends were nerds, and I preferred their company to that of the jocks, so I chose my tribe early.

When puberty hit hard, I was already at a disadvantage by not being into sports. I loved my Atari ST, but I was socially aware enough to know that that definitely wasn’t going to attract girls. Fortunately, I also loved music. Nirvana was getting big, and I was hooked. Drinking, smoking, and playing in bands were my thing, and they held strong social currency for a self-conscious kid.

As a result, an almost pathological fear of being judged kept me from getting involved. I missed the whole GTA thing and, except for a bit of Portal, never bothered with it.

I also know that I’m quite prone to addiction, so if I were into gaming, it would eat my life.

So, when I do finally retire and find I’m unable to do much, that’s when I’ll jump on. I’ll be the oldest noob in town and I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Here in the UK, I lease our EV. It’s £240 per month and electricity costs £30. Prior to that, I was spending £200 pm on fuel and paying thousands in garage bills to keep my 5-year-old generic family car on the road. The drive is better by an order of magnitude, it’s got insane torque, and I charge at home. I have no skin in the game; the decision for me was purely economical, and the benefits I’ve mentioned are more like a perk.

The only problem I’ve had with the EVs we’ve been leasing for 5 years now, is unsolicited criticism from EV haters. They seem to ignore the fact that I’ve been driving various diesel and petrol vehicles for decades. If my own lived experience of EVs was less rewarding than my previous ICE ownership I’d switch back. It’s not like a football team that I’m wedded to. They’re just generally better cars in terms of driving, torque, maintenance, cost to run and basically every metric that matters to me as a driver. Quite why that annoys people who in many cases have never even been behind the wheel of one is beyond me.