It has reached the level of moral panic, so it’s the current topic everywhere.

Even on Hacker News, threads about children and social media or short form video will draw a lot of comments supporting harsh age restrictions, including an alarming number of extremist comments in favor banning under-18s from using the internet or phones.

It’s not until the discussion turns to implantation details that the sentiment swings firm negative. The average comment in favor of age restrictions hasn’t thought through what it would mean, they only assume that some mechanism will exist that only impacts children and/or sites they don’t care about.

As soon as the implantation details come out and everyone realizes that you can’t restrict children without first verifying everyone’s age or that “social media” includes Discord and other services they use, the outrage starts.

We’re now entering the phases where everyone realizes that these calls to action have consequences for everyone because there is no easy solution that automatically only impacts children.