I don't think so, no. I'm asking if it is a good idea to ask the government to delegate the addressing of the problem to the platforms.

For instance, the government could provide privacy-preserving age verification and mandate that those platforms use it to check the age, and at the same time not ban VPNs.

Maybe (I am asking) it would make it harder for kids to access social media and porn in general, but it would not make it impossible (they could use a VPN). But I don't think we need to make it impossible for social media and I don't think we can make it impossible for porn:

* For social media, we just need it annoying enough that most kids don't bother using them. I feel like social media are a problem for kids mostly when (almost) all kids have access, because it is difficult to explain to your kid why they should be left apart.

* For porn, there are many ways to access it, it's impossible to entirely block it. And I am not convinced that it is a good thing to make it super illegal. Making it slightly less accessible so that it's not one URL away from the kids, though, may not be so terrible?

We do that kind of compromise for many other things: it's impossible to prevent kids from smoking cigarettes. Still we try to prevent it. I feel like sometimes it's okay to compromise, instead of fighting for all or nothing.