You only get ID’d for alcohol if you look like a kid. I haven’t been carded in years. And when you do get carded, they look at your license, check the date, and hand it right back. No copies are saved to a database that could get leaked who-knows-where.

If a social media site is concerned that a user may be underage, I’m fine with them asking for some sort of verification. But a blanket request on everyone to ID themselves by default is just not the way.

I am in favor of keeping kids off of social media, but I think the method of ID verification as default is entirely wrong.

Parents should ultimately be responsible for the activity of their child. If you can’t trust your child to use the internet/social media responsibly, they simply should not be given access to smart devices.

If a kid gets onto social media and does stupid things there, go after the parents for neglect. The same would happen if I wasn’t supervising my 8-year-old and they sneak off to vandalize someone else’s property.

At most, maybe conversations could happen with ISPs to standardize an optional whitelist system for home consumers with children to block access to key social media domains for unapproved devices, but that’s as far as I’d go. Empower parents with better supervisory tools to be more involved, no need to violate the rights of everyone else.