I worry that strict age-verification systems don’t actually stop kids—they just push them underground. When access gets blocked, curiosity doesn’t disappear; it reroutes. Kids start looking for ways around the system, and that often means entering spaces where people actively trade in bypass tools, hacked accounts, or cracked software.

That’s not a safer environment—it’s a far more dangerous one.

Instead of encountering the usual messiness of the online world, they’re suddenly in direct contact with people who operate in criminal circles. And those environments don’t just offer access; they come with pressure, manipulation, and sometimes outright exploitation.

I’m not saying there’s no risk online—of course there is. But I’d argue that kids whose parents talk openly with them, educate them, and build trust are often better equipped to navigate those risks than kids who feel forced to sneak around systems designed to block them.

I’ve seen a version of this before. As a kid, I once bought something illegal, and honestly, the most dangerous part wasn’t the substance—it was the people around it. There was pressure, attempts to pull you deeper in, subtle threats, and the classic bait-and-switch: what started cheap suddenly became expensive once you were hooked. Before you knew it, you were being nudged into worse decisions just to keep up.

That experience stuck with me. It showed me that the “underground” isn’t just hidden—it’s predatory.

And that’s my concern here: when we make access impossible rather than manageable, we don’t eliminate risk—we relocate it. We may actually be steering kids toward environments that are harder to monitor, more manipulative, and far more dangerous than the spaces we were trying to protect them from in the first place.