--- title: Age-Verification And The World Before Social Media description: A critical look at online age-verification policies, arguing they are largely ineffective and potentially harmful to privacy. Drawing on personal experience... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/age-verification-and-the-world-before-social-media-jzddrf04m twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Age-Verification And The World Before Social Media | daily.dev og:description: A critical look at online age-verification policies, arguing they are largely ineffective and potentially harmful to privacy. Drawing on personal experience... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/age-verification-and-the-world-before-social-media-jzddrf04m og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JZdDRf04M.png og:image:alt: Age-Verification And The World Before Social Media og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Age-Verification And The World Before Social Media **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 12 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A critical look at online age-verification policies, arguing they are largely ineffective and potentially harmful to privacy. Drawing on personal experience from the pre-social-media internet era, the piece examines how children have always found ways around age restrictions, reviews the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) linking violent video games and age-restricted content to harm, and contrasts the old culture of online anonymity with today's identity-verification-heavy approach. The author argues that parental education and preserving online anonymity would be more effective and less risky than mandating private-company identity checks, which introduce significant privacy and data-theft risks. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Online age-verification tools spread across U.S. for child safety, but adults are being surveilled](https://daily.dev/posts/online-age-verification-tools-spread-across-u-s-for-child-safety-but-adults-are-being-surveilled-o7okc8c08) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The hidden cost of social media age bans is everyone’s privacy](https://daily.dev/posts/the-hidden-cost-of-social-media-age-bans-is-everyone-s-privacy-3ci5rdqoy) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Age Verification: Protection Tool or Surveillance in Disguise?](https://daily.dev/posts/age-verification-protection-tool-or-surveillance-in-disguise--btat0kcty) · It's Foss · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/privacy), [#social-media](https://daily.dev/tags/social-media) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/age-verification-and-the-world-before-social-media-jzddrf04m) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Age-Verification And The World Before Social Media","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/age-verification-and-the-world-before-social-media-jzddrf04m","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/age-verification-and-the-world-before-social-media-jzddrf04m"},"datePublished":"2026-03-24T17:10:34.991Z","dateModified":"2026-03-24T17:11:03.296Z","description":"A critical look at online age-verification policies, arguing they are largely ineffective and potentially harmful to privacy. 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