You actually can, it’s called regulations, policies and enforcement. Don’t vaccinate your crotch fruit? Cool, they can’t go to public school, and you just won a visit from child welfare

It’s not like we don’t have regulations, policies and (some) enforcement. But there’s still dogshit parents. And for this kind of thing, how would you even enforce it?

by denying childcare benefits, and giving a visit from child welfare.

the school should start the procedure when they see the kid scrolling social media regularly, or if the kid regularly says they want their phone (when somehow taken away) as that means they are already kinda addicted to it. child welfare investigates whether the suspicions are true, initiates denying benefits, and communicates directly with the parents being willing to support them improving the situation, including offering free assistance from child’s psychologist. then, the point becomes not denying benefits, but recognizing that they have little time to figure it out themselves, and giving all the help they need.

That sounds a lot more involved, expensive and burdensome to people than just having the site ask you to verify with the app

Why do we need to? What’s the risk, some unsupervised kid with neglectful parents might see porn? Oh man, just imagine the world-ending consequences if that happened!

I was thinking gambling but porn is illegal to buy for under 18-yo in some places so they might use the age gating for that too

That feels an even sillier concern; what is a child going to do on a gambling site without some adult payment method to access services? And if you say “well they can steal their parent’s credit card,” how would that not equally apply to a parent’s photo ID or anything else necessary for age-verification?

Where I live a lot of kids have bank accounts, but of course it would be silly to put a lot of money there. But can’t you deposit cash into bitcoin things and use them for payments or gift cards? I’ve seen those on some gambling sites.

And if you say “well they can steal their parent’s credit card,” how would that not equally apply to a parent’s photo ID or anything else necessary for age-verification?

Photo ID apparently needs a face scan too, it’s not enough to just have the ID. Then you get into what if they steal the ID, fool their parents and whatnot which… I don’t think that’s as much of a concern tbh