User blog comment:PyroNacht/COPPA: Difference Between Maturity and Safety/@comment-6548012-20170511181206

It's good to finally see a point being made that seeing oneself as mature doesn't make it so&mdash;though even though I respect and enforce the COPPA on my scale, I must say that it is irrelevant and broken; as you've stated, maturity has nothing to do with being safe, a child can be cautious as much as an adult can be reckless, the fact that the act emphasizes the need for a certain age to be reached is, alongside the lack of awareness concerning it, what makes it so uneffective.

In my opinion, the COPPA should not exist in its current form, I think that it should be part of a local set of guidelines that need to be promoted as to make its understanding more widespread, though a couple of notable differences would also arise, namely, a more empathetic approach to users, and not just some policy lost in mile-long terms of use that barely anyone really reads, and a less condescending one as well, because not a lot of children like to be labelled as immature and insecure when they join a community, so let's not expect them to care. The immediate effect of such a change would be to render children who might be well aware of danger able to do whatever they want, yet still instructing them on the matter, hence preserving their sense of liberty without having them lie about their age until someone finds it out and blocks them.

Not to mention that, if anything, legally speaking, parents are responsible of their children, so not only would this benefit the primary concerned, children and website holders, but it would also force parents to actually do their job and take it upon them to make their children safe.