This is also a thing in the UK. It's very irritating as I have an account that goes back to the early days of Steam, a huge library and purchase via paypal. But I had to add a credit card to my account just to be acknowledged as an adult because of the UKs "Online Safety Act".

These laws are bullshit, infringing on the rights of and inconveniencing millions of adults, to supposedly "protect children" but there remains no meaningful regulation of children's access to the internet, parental responsibility or proper regulation of the social medial giants that are the real problem.

I extensively use a VPN now to bypass so many restrictions, including multiple sites that just choose to block UK IP addresses rather than comply. Like many bad ideas, they start in one country and spread. Australia brought us a social media ban for children which is also likely coming to the UK - again, bad legislation that doesn't fix the problem.

For me the solution is quite simple: ban children from owning smart phones (or even develop a "children's phone" that can only access approved services and sites), and create a regulated standardised allow-list of internet addresses and services for internet service providers to provide access to homes with children to use. Families can then opt in or out of that, and the government can focus its regulation on those services that want to provide services to children. It would also allow separation of adults from children in common spaces as services would essentially have a service for children and a service for adults (e.g. even a game like Fortnite could have separate servers for inside the childrens firewall, and others for adults outside).

Don't force this bullshit on the entire population; restrict the actual access of children to a curated version of the internet. If you restrict access at the entrance, you don't have to worry where the children go inside. It's perfectly easy to restrict children's access - it's just shitty parenting to not even bother. The lazy excuse that "my children know better than me how this all works" is bullshit, but can be got around by making it simpler - no physical access to the open internet for children at all.