I think the "you must claim to be at least 13 to be able to participate in an online discussion site" law makes sense as it functions as an IQ test of sorts to

I think the "you must claim to be at least 13 to be able to participate in an online discussion site" law makes sense as it functions as an IQ test of sorts to keep under-13s who are not ready to be on the internet off the internet. But I'm not in favor of increasing the age as I think its reasonable for teens to be able to openly admit that they're teens. The problem with most of the social media platforms is their hostility to anonymity. A teen with a Twitter account or a Reddit account should absolutely be an anon so that their posts while they're still figuring life out aren't tied to their real name and it would be good if social media companies and search engines would help people destroy the evidence of any embarrassing stuff they posted under their real identity as a teen for the same reason that we as a society typically expunge the criminal records of teenagers who commit crimes. But social media companies have been making it harder and harder to be anonymous. For example, Twitter started locking new accounts and forcing them to provide a phone number a few years ago ostensibly as an "anti-bot" measure. This is actively harmful and should be discontinued. Likewise, Google needs to allow users who wish to remain anonymous to turn off all of their account security measures other than a password. Security measures such as tying accounts to phones are helpful for adults who have their identity and their finances tied to these accounts but it makes these services unsafe for minors as it allows the platform to know the identities of their underage users which is a possible security risk. Minors should also be educated in terms of basic measures to protect their anonymous accounts from deanonymization attacks and on the dangers of meeting their "internet friends" in real life. All of this used to be standard advice for "heavily online" youth in the 90s and 00s. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be in the 20s other than the preference of some social media outlets that users use their real identity for ad targeting purposes and the insistence of certain powerful people who can't handle criticism that anonymity is bad because they get criticized by anons who otherwise wouldn't feel safe challenging them (i.e. online anonymity is also good because it allows adults who'd otherwise feel unsafe speaking truth to power to feel safe enough to do so).