It's just that the problem is not the trading or betting side, the problem is the information producing side.

E.g. imagine he placed a bet that Maduro would get shot in is left eye and die.

Same goes for the congress. Them making money is by far a smaller issue compared to the havoc they can cause trying to make a few bucks on their crazy bets.

Children who are smart enough to get access to a given vice without getting caught are more likely to be mature enough to be able to cope with that vice.

In your example it's obviously the round tree trunk that produces the dull sound.

1) Addictive design of many social networks (doom scrolling et al.) 2) Privacy & age verification

On 1) most parents would support a legal limit on digital media use by age. But it's not a realistic requirement. Next best thing is to outlaw social media that results in addictive scrolling behaviour. Treating it the same way as smoking is not ideal, but no better solutions have been proposed. Many people on HN wouldn't mind if FB, TikTok and Insta were treated the same way as cocaine. I.e. only available for a lot of money to people who are happy to break the law.

On 2) there are ways to implement technical solutions, that would allow the government to provide a privacy conscious service that would allow businesses to check if someone is 16+ or 18+ without collecting any other information. These services can be gamed. But that's not the point. A 14 year old could become addicted to cocaine and we wouldn't usually blame the policy for it. The problem is the government tries to solve problem 1) now, while the solution for 2) is being discussed.

Again, a law that limits social media use for under 16 year olds is necessary. But so is a toolset that would enable a plausible age check, and limit the desire of FANG (and their Chinese competitors) to target minors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Soviet_census