Things used to be more scrutinized. e.g. look at the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy and legal fallout over sexual content that existed in the game data files but could only be accessed by modding the game, at which point you could just mod the content in. Porn websites also used to generally put anything explicit behind a credit card barrier, and there was an attempt to require that that the supreme court struck down.

maybe the early aughts, none of this was the case when i was a teen it was basically unencumbered access

That was just a handful of loud busybodies, and society was smart enough then to not hand them the legal reins to placate them.

Try go get a beer as an 18 year old then :)

A beer is almost exclusively a negative thing. Access to youtube…?

Pretty sure the US has had things such as age ratings for movies, which are enforced when possible, and laws around advertising to children and false advertising for quite some time.

I miss the good ol' days when you could see some cut off breasts alongside the snake oil ads in the papers. People are so stupid these days.