Children's social media bans spread globally, forcing product decisions

Australia, and now European countries, are moving to restrict children's access to social media. The HN thread was not just a policy debate, it surfaced a real product design tension: the regulation targets access, but commenters argued the more important problem is addictive dark patterns that affect both adults and children, and those are not being regulated.

The comment comparing social media's harm profile to gambling was well-received. Gambling is heavily regulated in most jurisdictions. Social media uses many of the same psychological hooks but has largely avoided equivalent scrutiny. That asymmetry is becoming harder to defend as legislation spreads.

For builders, the practical question is age verification. Effective age gates require identity infrastructure that most consumer apps do not have and that users do not want to provide. The thread noted this tension directly: enforcing the bans may require stripping everyone's privacy to verify a few ages.