Make unrestricted devices like alcohol: you need ID to buy (but the box containing the device you’re sold is indistinguishable from any other, so the device may have a UUID but it can’t be traced to your ID); kids caught with unrestricted devices in school have them confiscated; maybe fine parents, but I think discouragement and banning in schools is enough. Kids can have restricted devices, distinguished from unrestricted by appearance in a way that’s hard to fake.
I don't know, treating general-purpose computers like alcohol seems a lot more dystopian to me. Does this extend to PC components? Can I build a machine and put Linux on it?
Maybe for the next few years you'll be able to do that. Analogy: back in the day you could just build your own airplane and fly it around. There were no regulations.
> I don't know, treating general-purpose computers like alcohol seems a lot more dystopian to me
Isn't this the logical end goal of basically every approach to "age verification", though? If you really want to control access to the internet, then you can't let people have a VPN or Tor, and if you don't want people to VPNs or Tor then you need to lock the device down.
Well, the alternative is that Facebook makes you scan a government photo ID before you can use it. Any sense of privacy is gone, but at least general purpose computing isn't outlawed.
But don’t bring it to school and use it in class! A teacher may confiscate this under the existing system. And of course parents can pick up the confiscated device.
I agree that schools don’t provide enough challenge to students, so a student could be using the device to actually learn without an alternative, thus confiscating it would be wrong. But I think that would be rare, because I believe most schools today have Chromebooks which can access more than a lifetime’s worth of online resources in any subject, so the student can save whatever they need a thinkpad for at home. And it should be solved by giving those students Chromebooks, not letting other students use their phones during class (if a school confiscates phones but allow thinkpads I think that would also work well enough).
