Parents should be aware of where their kids are at all times and physically prevent them from entering liquor stores.
Another difference is that internet access has potential advantages for children. There are ways in which they can derive immense value from it. On the contrary, there is no justifiable reason why a child should be allowed to drink.
Please don't rationalize such draconian measures and help them claim legitimacy.
> If lazy parents don't want to monitor their children while they spend all day on their ipads, that's their problem--it shouldn't be made mine.
This comes up all the time when age verification laws (of any kind) are discussed. Notice that this comment is not concerned with the implementation details of age verification laws, it simply rejects them in principle because the poster believes it is solely the parent's responsibility to monitor their children's Internet usage.
Offline age/ID verification is not a false equivalence comparison. Parents have a responsibility to supervise and protect their children from harm, it's true. But as children get older (esp. in their teens) it's critical for their development to have unsupervised time to interact with the world on their own terms. And for this reason most countries have some form of codified social responsibility to supervise and protect children from harm when they are in public spaces. Liquor stores checking ID is one example of that, but there are many others.
Every thread on HN about this topic has people saying it's solely the parents' responsibility to control their children's access to harmful media. I replied to one with what I believe is a good counter-example of this. As of writing this, 3 of the 5 replies to my comment are shifting the goal posts (criticising implementation details, rather than the concept of age verification). 1 is saying ban all kids from the Internet (requires age verification) and 1 is saying allow kids to buy liquor.
Online public spaces are still public spaces, so they share the social responsibility that offline public spaces have to refuse children access and/or protect them from harm.
