I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them.

I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset.

I'm in my mid 30's. When I was very young I remember my Dad semi-regularly having to email or even fax off permission slips to websites aimed at kids before they would create an account for me.

> any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset

Then we certainly shouldn't be passing laws mandating age verification. If parents want to abdicate their responsibility over their children, it's not the role of government to enshrine that abdication into law and take over the duty of parenting from them.

If regulation is to be had, then it should take the form of mandating websites and services provide privacy preserving tools for parents to use, if they want to use them. If they don't, that's on them. Everyone else needn't suffer because a subset of the population has chosen to offload their responsibility into the government and web services.

It's what I see happening. None of this would be a big deal if parents were present, but we give our attention to work & entertainment, and find it easier to continue doing that if the kids are also being entertained instead of playing, which caused problems in the physical world.