It's not "the world is just a terrible place", but rather "things that kids cannot handle inherently exist in the world". The unfettered Internet is a less appropriate babysitter than a red light district.

And talking about "age verification" as if it's some straightforward thing is an utterly dishonest framing. The core idea of the distributed Internet is simple communication which further complexity/policy can be layered on top of. If you want digital entertainment for your kids, then seek out products which are explicitly offering that.

Nobody has a problem with a DigitalKidsPlayLand which performs age verification (to prevent adults from participating), strictly curates/moderates content, and escrows all activity for later review. It's this push to legally require such things for everyone that is horribly authoritarian and needs to be soundly rejected.