Why not restrict the addictive design of the algorithms instead? No need to blanket ban social media access if the social media cannot optimize to steal every last inch of their attention. Anything on the feed becomes opt-in only and no engagement data coming from the user or from the outside can be used to optimize it, thats it. Control is back in the hands of the content consumer, parental restrictions become trivial, no black box algorithm deciding what bubbles up and what gets buried deep down.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand it clearly is necessary - we expect parents to do this but most are obviously failing (and I say this being a parent myself). Look what any 13 year old is doing on their phone or what disgusting horrors they encounter on the abyss of tiktok or Roblox.

On the other hand the means available to block access are too crude and seem to impinge on everyone's privacy. A shopkeeper checking the age to sell alcohol can look at your face, but an app cannot - so the solutions all seem to resort to quite invasive age checks.

I saw this related EU initiative a few weeks ago (also on HN) which seems to try to find a middle ground where you have to authorise ones and then can simply prove you are 18 without revealing any private info, but I do wonder how this holds up in practice - will the most-in-need-of-protection kids not simply get an adult to do a one-off signup for them?

https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/04/30/what-to-know-about-...

The last generation with access to social media.

Only government opinion channels are allowed.

This feels strange. Social media is already a central part of modern life

*Corrupt regime will restrict access to the Internet further, under the pretense of "protecting the children"