Do you think age restrictions are effective?

To be honest, it’s easy to get past age restrictions nowadays. Especially, on the internet where you can just pick a random date at certain years to get past the restriction. Now, when it comes to drinking that can a whole other topic on its own. Though I want to keep it clean on this thread. If the restriction is enforced in person then yes it is effective but when you don’t have that person stopping you then it brings loopholes that the younger groups jump through. Such as rated R movies, you only need to change the date of your age then it gives you access unless your parents have put in parental control. Even then, it can still be iffy since kids can easily find a way into the parent’s accounts. The younger generations are very smart so it doesn’t surprise me when they do slip through the cracks. I remember one day that I and my sister were trying to buy a game. It was Saints Row I think. Well, the girl carded my sister but even though my sister was older than 18 the girl wouldn’t let us buy the game because she was getting it for me. I still think it was bizarre, to be honest. It all came down to the fact she was my sister, not my parent. I was about 16-17 years old at the time. That would be the physical enforcement which definitely works.

What do you think? Are age restrictions effective?

@Discussions
@Gamers
@ScreenSloths

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Nowadays definitely not, like you cannot check someone’s true age online unless you take anonymousity away which would lead to people feeling watched over by the state…

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Exactly! It’s very hard nowadays to do that.

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Depends.

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Yep, that’s true as well!

Maybe in the real world? But online? No people can easily lie about it so it’s really useless in my opinion

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Agreed!

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I think it depends. Like, if you have involved parents and you’re a kid and you tell them about this thing you saw that has a certain age limit, they look at it and they can either be like, “You can watch that” because they know the maturity of their child or they’re like, “Let’s wait a few years”. But it definitely depends tho.
I was too young for episode when I joined but I asked my parents and they didn’t give a flip so yeah.
Like age restrictions are good if you have a good relationship with your parents.

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Lol, yes.
I used to do that :joy:

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Lol yeah, it seems to be a normal thing now.

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I agree, kids have been getting access to certain areas they should not be getting. My sister is dealing with this right now. My nephew is 3 years old which is very smart for that age. Lacey hand’s him her cell phone when he wants to watch stuff on youtube. He has watched something’s he should not have been watching which is why she is having to put parental control restrictions on while he watches. He is going to be a pain in a** when he gets older about age restricted matters.

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Eek!

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Yep!

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Added a tag :smiley_cat:

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Honestly, never really cared about age restrictions on games/movies or whatever else exists. Like I get why it exists, but at the same time, I feel like you could remove age restrictions for games and nothing would change. This is coming from someone who’s played any age restriction game for a LONG time even as a kid. To give an idea of how much trust dad had in me with those games. He gave me the tomb raider/doom games when I was still in single digit age.
Movies though, no idea. I stuck to DVD’s that had a higher age restriction than me occasionally, but I didn’t care much, it was cool to me. But definitely could see some movies where it’s just “don’t watch this till you’re 18”

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Thanks!

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Yeah, I agree with you. I was the same way. My parents let me watch whatever I wanted.

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Which is fine, to me if your parents are responsible and know you’re mature enough for something. E.g the john wick movies or friday the 13th. The age restriction should be ignored (it’s a safety net but the parents should have the choice to ignore/follow it.)
Are they effective? Maybe. There’s not much evidence to really throw it either way.

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it depends on how you look at it.
I remember when, for example, the legal age of drinking here went from 16 to 18.
all the 16-year olds were still drinking, however, kids of the age of 16 hand our with kids around the age of 14 sometimes. so those 14-year-old were able to get cigarettes, alcohol, etc. teens of the age of 18 still hang out with kids of the age of 16, but not 14, which was the bigger issue here.

on games and movies, I would say it’s partly up to the kids and their parents. it’s more the moment you expose a kid to violence and gore that you do need to think about ages.

as for stuff such as websites and social media, the only reason it’s all 13+ is the privacy and the fact that you’re not allowed to collect data of people under the age of 13, even if it’s a kid-friendly site. but most people don’t even know. We did a project on parents and their questions while raising a child, and their main concern was when and how to allow your kid (< 9) onto social media such as Instagram and TikTok, as well as how vigilant they should be. When in reality, they aren’t allowed to be on those platforms at all or not without parental supervision. (which answered that big question pretty quickly)

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Honestly age restrictions aren’t even the issue with those 2. I know terrifying people to not do something is probably a bad idea, but can we do that with smoking? Encouraging teens not to smoke is a great idea rn, the age restriction does nothing there.

Understandable, to me as long as it’s not too extreme it should be fine.

remembers when I was in primary school and people already had a facebook account at 10 or 11 yeah I don’t think many people seem to care about 13+
And since not many parents are tech savy (but we’re now hitting the point where those parents are more common) i’m not surprised if children just sneak on social media very easily.