Which is why it should be illegal, but enforcement should be light.

It's ridiculous to require websites to validate users ages. That's either a massive security vulnerability waiting to be exploited, or pointlessly easy to bypass.

Instead, we should treat it like "bad parenting" and treated like a form of neglect, with social workers helping parents learn about the harms of social media.

Then, we don't lose our civil liberties and human rights while still "protecting the kids". Let's put the millions of dollars that the age verification middleware was going to charge and put that money towards social workers and mental health counsellors, eh?

But, most of all, we need to make addictive patterns* themselves illegal, and also the dark patterns that trick users into making choices that benefit the platform over their own interests.

* Although I worry that they might make videogames that depend on random chance illegal, too. Loot collection RPGs are only fun because of the random chance at loot, but I worry they'll be caught by "gatcha/loot box regulations" if the laws are written by clueless politicians.