this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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So let me get this straight:
When I was 13, I managed to figure out the router password, disabled child protection for myself, then watched porn on my Android 2.3 phone that I had managed to put a custom ROM on because I liked the way it looked and had no idea what a "launcher" was yet.
This is not a hypothetical btw.
My parents were smart enough to enable appropriate blocking and secured access to those settings. I'm not sure something on-device was available at the time, but I included the bit about the custom rom to demonstrate that, even though I didn't know WTF I was doing, I was more than capable of fucking around with the tech to get it to do what I wanted.
So were my parents in breach of their duties on child protection?
I don't think they were. They actually did educate themselves (visiting a course / parent meetup to discuss and learn how to protect me from the Internet), and implemented everything they learned.
I was just a little shit and found a way around this.
And this is NOT an edgecase. Because guess what. It takes one kid in the friend group to figure out a way to circumvent parental controls, and then EVERYONE knows how to do it.
It simply does not fucking matter how well intentioned, knowledgeable, and present the parents are (mine were all of that).
Going "this would not be a problem if parents parented" is the LAZIEST fucking excuse, and I'm sick and tired of reading about it on here.
(Because I probably have to make it clear: I'm not advocating for photo/passport scanning, third party age verification,... and all that bullshit. What I think would be a FANTASTIC idea would be privacy-preserving age verification. There are two good ways to do this: 1) on a login attempt, prove that you are of age by presenting a fresh, signed token from a government service proving that you are over 18, and nothing else; site does not get any info, government does not know what you were trying to access; 2) a device-level age field. Proof here comes from the device itself, and can be 100% privacy preserving; just a "yep, is of age". In this scenario... GUESS WHAT, PARENTS GET ENABLED TO PARENT "PROPERLY" BY PROVIDING THEM WITH A GOOD, SIMPLE, PRIVACY-PRESERVING TECHNICAL SOLUTION.)
I really should remember to put a huge "THIS IS NOT A VERY SERIOUS COMMENT" on most of my comments. I find I'm way too snarky for text based communication.
Anyways. I'm not saying parents should be punished because their kid managed to watch porn. I was just making a joke about how stupid everything is.
I didn't grow up with routers and android phones. My equivalent of breaking into the router and changing the password was to climb into the paper recycling container to find Donald Duck comics but ending up finding porno mags.
The fact is, kids are always going to find porn. There's just no way around it. If they put ID proof protections on the websites, they just gonna figure out torrents or some other way of downloading stuff.
In that case: sorry to blow up on you. I have seen to many comments on here claiming these things while being 100% serious. I just saw your comment and incidentally had time to write the above for once, so, here we are.
I agree that there's no way to completely cut teens off from porn. Your torrent example is perfectly demonstrating this.
But I also do not understand the current outrage at anything trying to improve the situation, even when it's not some stupid "scan your face" scheme.
It's mostly just that I don't want the government to know precisely which websites I visit. Nor do I want the the porn sites to know exactly who I am.
Let me have my privacy. I've been watching porn since I was 12 or 13 and absolutely would've figured out a way to do it even if there'd been age restrictions because I was horny af. Nothing bad has happened to me because of it. Perhaps a mild addiction to masturbation unless I'm having sex but that hurts literally nobody. Worse case scenario I last a little too long occasionally.
Block pornhub and teens will find much seedier sites.
I understand, I want that too. It's easily possible though (just one example for a scheme):
Alternatively, if we go the "device has an age bracket field browsers access" route, it's even simpler, and just as if not more privacy preserving.
While I agree that your situation isn't an edge case (I found dads locked porn collection of VHS tapes and learned that that lock could be circumvented with a fridge magnet) at the age of 9?
But on the other hand, let's say you post something to the internet that may be considered not okay for children. And let's say that thing is about gun powder (which you absolutely can make from foraging natural ingredients). It's your personal website, it's labeled as not intended for children and you aren't a big company so you don't have the ability to just hire another company for things like age verification.
Then you get sued by a regulatory body in another country because you didn't adhere to their laws? Does that sound reasonable to you?
If a parent or guardian is taking every precaution to keep their kid safe that is reasonable within the law and that kid still gains access to something that can harm them that's an accident. If the parent takes no precautions and allows their child that they are legally responsible for the well being and safety of to raw dog life with no precautions whatsoever because that's too hard, or they don't care or whatever, then it seems reasonable to me that they be held responsible under the law.
Their right to have a third party protect their children ends at my right to privacy which to me extends to my right to anonymity specifically because it has already been shown that without anonymity privacy just doesn't exist in this age of the internet.
What does that mean? It means that companies that collect your data but promise "privacy" cannot be trusted to uphold that promise, which means the only option left is to be as anonymous as possible.
I want you to understand that I do agree that when one kid figures out the loophole, that loophole spreads like wild fire.
But on the other hand, if a child figured out how to turn off the security system to the family car, grabbed the keys and went for a joyride with their friends, is it the fault of the parents or the fault of the car manufacturer? Because one of them is legally liable under the law.
Would it be acceptable to have to send your thumbprint to BMW every time you wanted to drive your car?
Id say your parents managed to get you to educate yourself in lots of useful skills by giving you a motivation. Good job.
I'd also like to think so. In this case though, this was clearly not what was intended, and also involved a lot of porn.