Earlier this year, many lawmakers and regulators around the world were, once again, trying to control and regulate the internet in the name of protecting children, but the latest round of policy discussions related to effective bans on the use of VPNs appear destined for failure. While governments can make particular websites or apps more difficult to access, completely closing the available workarounds for those restrictions would require levels of identity checking, network surveillance, and device control that most liberal democracies are simply not willing to accept.

Indeed, governments across the West are increasingly turning to age-based restrictions on access to specific websites and apps, with some jurisdictions also moving those restrictions deeper into the lower layers of the tech stack. Australia became the first country to impose a nationwide under-16 restriction on covered social media platforms last year; Utah and Texas have pursued similar policies at the app store level, and California is pushing the responsibility of knowing a user’s age all the way down into commercial operating systems starting in 2027 (open source operating systems are exempt). Similar measures are being considered across other jurisdictions around North America and Europe.

And because age restrictions that depend on a user’s geographic location can often be circumvented by masking their IP address, some governments have turned their attention to the next logical target: VPNs. K. regulators came under heavy fire while wrestling with how to deal with similar concerns. Every time users find a way around one checkpoint, lawmakers seemingly respond by going one level deeper into the tech stack.

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