Australians to face age checks from search engines

Re:Australians to face age checks from search engines by theshackleford on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @03:28AM (#44441053)

> That said, a better approach would be to limit kids under certain age from owning smartphones with full internet access. Instead, they could have a phone without internet access—dumb phones—or ones with curated/limited access.

This would be completely and utterly unenforceable in any capacity. Budget smartphones are cheap enough and ubiquitious enough that children don't need your permission or help to get one. Just as I didnt need my parents assistance to have three different mobile phones in high school when as far as they knew, I had zero phones.

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Re:Australians to face age checks from search engines by account42 on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @06:39AM (#44442063)

Which is of course why we don't bother making selling cigarettes and alcohol to children illegal. Except we totally do that because it largely works even if sufficiently motivated individuals can and do get around the restrictions.

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Re:Australians to face age checks from search engines by theshackleford on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @07:39AM (#44442474)

Cigarettes and alcohol are consumbable products that must be acquired again and again. There are already millions of phones in open circulation and you only need to acquire it once.

Even if you could stop phones, you wont stop them from accessing it from literally a near infinite supply of other devices.

It's pure and utter fantasy.

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Re:Australians to face age checks from search engines by account42 on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @07:51AM (#44442574)

Mobile phone plans are still subscriptions and not buy for life things last I checked.

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Re:Australians to face age checks from search engines by tzs on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @09:49AM (#44443708)

You don’t need a mobile phone plan to use free Wi-Fi to access the Internet.

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