You're describing California AB1043 which passed a few months ago and is now the law in California. We all got very angry about it when it passed.

How does the parent prove they are the parent. All you need is to think about the next step, come on now.

…upon device purchase? Very obviously?

The verification is not done per device but per usage session.

Why are you telling someone else how their hypothetical implementation works?

There's no hypothetical, they tried to equate this to basically buying a gun where you do the certification on purchase. Internet connected devices are not planned to be controlled like that but per session. Under that model what they proposed is obviously not going to work.

Comment 1: “maybe it should be this way”

Comment 2: “it can’t be that way because of this”

Comment 3: “but it can, because it could maybe be this way”

You: “There was no hypothetical”

Oh my god the comments are getting so stupid. Please, I beg you to stop.

They are indeed

Oh nice save!

The existing California law that passed a few months ago makes it per user account

This is incorrect, and you have failed to read my mind on how it works. Extremely weird attempt, but I applaud the bravado anyways.

How someone proves parentage of a given child upon device purchase is far from obvious.

Parental controls. Client-side blocking of content. Apple's parental controls are so good that parents give young children unsupervised internet access--the entire generation if iPad babies. Current iPads even use on-device AI to detect nudity in photos and prevent them from being taken, sent, recieved, or viewed.

If the server can trust the device, then you don't need the parent, you can use a digital-enabled id card or passport.

This is in fact the EU age verification app

https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/european-ag...

The concern here is the trust in the device appears to be tied to proprietary os/device vendors.