It is pointless, it was always pointless and always will be. That's the point. Before the internet kids were stealing their dad's or brother's Hustlers and Playboys. For most of the internet's time so far you just click a button that says "yes I'm over 18 I pinky promise". In the future of the internet any effort to seriously implement age verification short of submitting a DNA sample is going to be bypassed. Trying to find porn is one of only like four things that teenage boys think about, you're not going to stop that signal. Ask anyone born before 2000 about forest porn and they'll probably have a story about finding a couple magazines or a VHS stashed in the woods somewhere near where they lived as a kid.

Best case, you just drive them off the mainstream sites that verify age and onto shadier websites that don't. Or the kid that steals his dad's ID to watch porn starts downloading and distributing them on USBs to everyone in his school, makes like $800, and then gets arrested, now this kid has an unnecessary sex crime on his record because the government really wants to know when you're jerking off. It's all just pointless performatism that causes more problems than it solves. And that's not even getting into the fact that a nefarious government, which we definitely have here in America, can use that information to pinpoint especially LGBT folks via their porn viewing habits.

So at best it's stupid and useless and at worst it's going to get people killed.

Couldn't a kid "borrow" their parent's ID for the age verification? Isn't it just as pointless today?