We (in the tech industry) did this to ourselves. The internet my kids have is very different than the internet I had in the 90s. Algorithmically optimized short form video or other content in an infinite scroll is hurting children so much it borders on abuse. They have no brain capability to resist the micro-dopamine hits we are so scientifically delivering to them. The biggest tragedy is that it hits the lower income kids the worst - the ones whose parents are around less often to monitor their device usage.

Parents and policy makers have noticed that their kids attention spans are lower, their ability to read and reason is lower, and most alarming their ability to socialize suffers. Of course they are going to try and stop it. Requiring age verification, and putting the onus on the social media sites seems like a way to do this. We are able to verify ages for all sorts of things online, e.g. gambling sites, opening bank accounts, etc. It shouldn't be too hard for social media sites to figure out how to require age verification to create an account that can access their service.

Part of the reason we had the internet we did when we were kids was because it was so new and open. It still is just as new and open! It's mostly that large sites have emerged, and people have decided they like those more than forums, etc.

I have no idea why tbh! But I think an age gated internet is far worse a solution than parents simply enabling device management on mobile phones and filtering on their home networks.