[pflenker]

As a parent, what I find effective are content rating systems, be it for movies, games or apps, along with the ability to control and fine-tune them.

For example, with Apple's parental controls, I can blanket-decline access to Social Media apps, or to apps recommended for a specific age or older, and I can also allow exceptions as I see it fit (for example, my kids have no access to WhatsApp but they are allowed to use Signal, both have the same age recommendations)

This moves the responsibility for age verification to me, the parent, and provides me with suitable tools to monitor this. With this, there is no need for my kid or me to upload sensitive data or go through some bad age verification implementation.

Websites are more difficult to control, but not impossible.

Long story short - improve tooling for parents that allow more centralized control instead of mandating social media to do the age verification on their end.

[HerbManic]

It is similar to what Frank Zappa proposed when they were looking at age restrictions on records. He said, they should have the lyrics printed up so parents could decide if their kids should assess it. A decent moderate response.

Alas, the age restrictions came in and the big warning on the front covers was added. It did kind of backfire because that warning started to become a badge of quality to younger people. A similar thing could happen here. If you restrict it then it becomes the forbidden fruit.

[pocksuppet]

That's what the California law does