Every generation seems to get a “think of the children” scare tied to whatever the new medium is at the time. In the 1950s it was comic books causing juvenile delinquency, then the Satanic Panic, then “stranger danger,” even stuff like Quebec banning kids under 16 from movie theaters in the 1930s. The pattern is always the same: exaggerated harm, a lot of fear, and blunt rules that don’t actually solve the problem.
Age verification laws fit perfectly into that lineage. The difference now is that instead of banning a book or a theater, the solution is mass identity checks and data collection. That’s a much deeper intrusion, and it normalizes the idea that anonymity itself is dangerous. And just like past panics, it doesn’t even work well. Kids who know what a VPN is can bypass it in minutes, while ordinary users lose privacy and creators, especially sex workers, take the hit. The stated goal is protection, but the real outcome is more surveillance, more censorship, and more risk from data breaches and phishing.
History suggests these things rarely get rolled back, either. The fear fades, but the restrictions stick and quietly expand. Today it’s porn; tomorrow it’s whatever content is politically inconvenient.
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Every generation seems to get a “think of the children” scare tied to whatever the new medium is at the time. In the 1950s it was comic books causing juvenile delinquency, then the Satanic Panic, then “stranger danger,” even stuff like Quebec banning kids under 16 from movie theaters in the 1930s. The pattern is always the same: exaggerated harm, a lot of fear, and blunt rules that don’t actually solve the problem.
Age verification laws fit perfectly into that lineage. The difference now is that instead of banning a book or a theater, the solution is mass identity checks and data collection. That’s a much deeper intrusion, and it normalizes the idea that anonymity itself is dangerous. And just like past panics, it doesn’t even work well. Kids who know what a VPN is can bypass it in minutes, while ordinary users lose privacy and creators, especially sex workers, take the hit. The stated goal is protection, but the real outcome is more surveillance, more censorship, and more risk from data breaches and phishing.
History suggests these things rarely get rolled back, either. The fear fades, but the restrictions stick and quietly expand. Today it’s porn; tomorrow it’s whatever content is politically inconvenient.