New York just proposed the most invasive state-level age verification bill the US has seen. Senate Bill S08102 would extend age verification requirements down to the device itself: internet-connected devices, operating system providers, and app stores would all be required to implement what the bill calls “age assurance” before users can access their own hardware and software ecosystems.
Edit:
Meta is one of the lobbyists for the age verification bill.
Into the Metaverse: The Money and Motivations Behind Meta’s App Store Gambit
In May 2025, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representative John James (R-MI) introduced the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA), a bill that would require app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for users under 18. Meta has bankrolled a wildly expensive lobbying campaign to enact ASAA and its state-level analogs, and instead of recoiling in horror at taking kid privacy advice from Meta, some lawmakers are credulously going along with it.
Confirmed by Bloomberg : Meta Clashes With Apple, Google Over Age Check Legislation
The struggle has pitted Meta Platforms Inc. and other app developers against Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the world’s largest app stores. Lobbyists for both sides are moving from state to state, working to water down or redirect the legislation to minimize their clients’ risks.
This year alone, at least three states — Utah, Texas and Louisiana — passed legislation requiring tech companies to authenticate users’ ages, secure parental consent for anyone under 18 and ensure minors are protected from potentially harmful digital experiences. Now, lobbyists for all three companies are flooding into South Carolina and Ohio, the next possible states to consider such legislation.
in addition, there are Over 50 Child Advocacy Groups Unite to Demand App Store Accountability
IDK what proxies you use but free ones really suck IMO and they aren’t very obfuscated so they can be easily blocked too. VPNs are trickier but there are methods to detect VPN traffic so that could be blocked too. If you wanted to go ballistic you could even set a whitelist of services and everything else gets blocked.
Kids don’t care. They’ll use whatever is available. Free ones are almost undoubtedly collecting and selling your browsing info too, but kids won’t care about that either. Now your attempts at blocking them have made their browsing less private.
And now you’ve fallen into the whack-a-mole trap, which is exactly what most parents don’t have time for.
Methods available on residential ISP-provided modem/routers? That’s the only “networking gear” that most households have. I think you may be falling for the Average Familiarity trap.
Sure, and your kid can just buy a cheap prepaid SIM card to keep under their mattress. Data plans are stupid cheap, and kids are resourceful. Hell, I can walk down to the corner store and buy an entire android phone for like $50. Will it be a good phone? Fuck no. But it’ll get access to the internet. And if a neighbor or nearby business has unprotected WiFi, I don’t even need the prepaid SIM card.
If you’re trying to stop a 14 year old from looking at tits, you’re already in a pitched battle against an opponent who will never run out of determination. My original point was simply that parents don’t have the time or resources to constantly play cat and mouse with whatever kids are using to jork it. There are entire private companies and government departments with hundreds of full time employees who specialize in parental controls, and they still struggle to keep up. Parents who work full time (and who probably aren’t tech literate enough to do anything more than click the “Enable AdGuard” button when setting up their router, if their router even supports AdGuard) simply won’t have the time or resources.
That’s a capability that most routers don’t have, which is the kind of bills we should be passing except there’s zero upside for big business.