Mandatory age verification sounds like a sensible safety measure, but it would come at a serious cost to privacy and free expression. To verify every user's age, platforms would need to collect government IDs or other sensitive documents, creating massive honeypots of personal data that could be breached or misused. Even age-estimation technology isn't foolproof, and it often ends up blocking legitimate users while determined kids find workarounds anyway. Beyond that, requiring ID to join social media effectively excludes people who don't have official documents, like homeless teens, young adults in unstable situations, or folks from marginalized communities. Social media is how people find community, access information, and organize. Putting a mandatory ID check in front of that gate would push vulnerable users further to the margins without actually solving the underlying problems of online safety. Better to focus on better moderation tools and digital literacy, not blanket identity checks that treat everyone as suspect.