> Something being physically possible doesn't "break" the law, and breaking a law doesn't render that law useless.
No, but the ease of breaking the law does need to be weighed against the costs it imposes on everyone else. Carrying a driver's license is almost a non-cost, and is really only necessary til people hit 28 or so and cashiers largely stop checking.
Needing to verify age online could place very real costs on people. Enabling surveillance is an issue. The chilling effect of knowing that database leaks are going to tie your real identity to your online one is an issue (think the Ashley Madison leaks, but for your old angsty teenager Reddit account). There are a lot of small groups who don't want their membership revealed, like LGBT people in countries with laws against it, domestic abuse victims, support groups for people with trauma, etc, etc.
I don't think I've seen a system that doesn't involve those issues. I'm sure one is hypothetically possible, but that never seems to be a goal of these laws.
So the question is whether restricting social media use by age is worth those drawbacks. My personal values say it's not, but I do recognize that's a value call to some degree and views will differ.
You can make social media illegal for under 16s without requiring online age validation.
After all, a form of this already exists with the US COPPA [1] law, and the presence of that law hasn't forced age validation on everyone.
If the US can make it de-facto illegal for companies to let under 13s use social media, and has been the case for over 20 years, then it shouldn't be a sudden privacy-ending problem for Australia to make it illegal for under 16s to use social media.
Kids get around COPPA all the time. Everyone in my kid's middle school knows that you have to simply lie about your age when you sign up for an Internet service, because most of them won't let you in if you are stupid enough to say you are under 13, and the services that let you in are nerfed to the point of uselessness.
Furthermore, now I have to navigate the morality of encouraging my own kid to lie, just so she can use an online service that I approve of as a parent. Terrible law.
No, but the ease of breaking the law does need to be weighed against the costs it imposes on everyone else. Carrying a driver's license is almost a non-cost, and is really only necessary til people hit 28 or so and cashiers largely stop checking.
Needing to verify age online could place very real costs on people. Enabling surveillance is an issue. The chilling effect of knowing that database leaks are going to tie your real identity to your online one is an issue (think the Ashley Madison leaks, but for your old angsty teenager Reddit account). There are a lot of small groups who don't want their membership revealed, like LGBT people in countries with laws against it, domestic abuse victims, support groups for people with trauma, etc, etc.
I don't think I've seen a system that doesn't involve those issues. I'm sure one is hypothetically possible, but that never seems to be a goal of these laws.
So the question is whether restricting social media use by age is worth those drawbacks. My personal values say it's not, but I do recognize that's a value call to some degree and views will differ.