Battles against nebulous 'harm' may be unproductive
Setting aside documented instances when adults attempt (or succeed) in seducing minors into behaviours endangering the victims' physical, mental, or sexual wellbeing, leaves a bewildering miscellany of worries, some tangible, and others in the eye of particular beholders, which age-verification is claimed to reduce.
Regarding matters broadly to be labelled 'abuse', there is broad belief that wrongdoers must be thwarted, and if caught punished. Presumably, 'social media' and some discussion fora are rated as potential dangers. When these outlets are identified, their owners, if known, must be made responsible for supervising visitors. That applies to the big names, e.g. Twatter, and to fly-by-night outfits. Site blocking is crude, but can succeed in containing problems if blocking is regularly updated in a game of whack-a-mole. The prospect of blocking by one or more nations definitely would concentrate the minds of mainstream social media.
A lot of effort goes into blocking sites the offence of which is promoting removing crumbs from the tables of fat cat copyright rentiers. This effort would better be directed towards sites careless over potential harm to children and vulnerable adults. It's not just sexual predation to be considered. The Internet abounds with sites promulgating weird dietary, behavioural, and other life-style choices which are inappropriate for consideration by the immature. Why not identify them and keep them blocked for the benefit of everyone? Introduce legislation exempting government agencies from commercial (i.e. lost revenue) blowback when site owners assert they have been wrongly pilloried.
Simply blocking offers no infallibility, but it together with whack-a-mole deters everyone other than the committed, especially children with their many distractions (unless they are of obsessive nature).
The remainder of worries appears to centre upon access, without participation, to pornography. Throughout my nearly octogenarian lifetime in the UK, 'battles' and the shifting of boundaries have been continuous. For example, 'content' available now from terrestrial broadcasters would in the 50s and 60s have caused literal apoplexy among a 'Good and Great' concerned over the lax mores of lesser folk whilst themselves indulging in whatever they fancy.
For instance, nudity is commonplace in media legitimately available to children. Why shouldn't everyone take it in their stride? Perhaps access to explicit sexual activities of mainstream nature, such as in the comic French film 'Sexual Chronicles of a French Family' (2012) or the amusing 'Arabian Nights' (1974) should be incorporated into 'sex education' for adolescents; no doubt, much more enjoyable than earnest pontification over 'gender' and other modern nonsense preoccupations.
Non-mainstream, yet legal, materials likely offputting or puzzling for most adolescents, is better relegated to the whack-a-mole category (e.g. Pornhub and its like).
There is a place for age-checking, but by far more imaginative means than the numpties in Parliament would conceive. Why not commandeer 'AI' for the task? People, children and adults, could register themselves on each of their devices through 'conversation' with a high-end AI. Assuming the AI had been trained on the usual dross, plus extensive other materials, the conversation could lead to categorising an individual as mentally mature/immature, low/medium/high intelligence, broadly/narrowly educated, etc, without needing to assign a specific age.
Questions would range over factual knowledge, beliefs about appropriate behaviours in particular situations, and tests of mental acuity. Regarding factual knowledge, total ignorance of 'conversations' on Twatter/Facebook, of 'celebrities/influencers' lifestyles and opinions, and of the names of footballers, would be a strong step towards assignment in the upper categories of sentience.
Similarly, an hypothetical question such as "You were driving a car and knocked an old man off his bicycle. Which of the following immediate actions by you would be most sensible to do first? - (a) Check whether the man is injured. (b) … (c) … (d) Get the man onto his feet and then punch him in the face for damaging your car's bodywork - should if answered (d) result in banning from any site which gives the slightest hint of portraying or condoning violence. Thus, 'Superman' fan club websites would be off-limits.
A fifteen-year-old offering some inkling of what 'Special Relativity' is about would earn a free pass to anything so long as he hadn't made praise for the Beatles' musicality.
Committee types could have hours of immense fun fine-tuning the age-checking mechanism.
