For many young people, social media platforms are not simply entertainment. They are places of learning, authorship, peer support, political awakening, and cultural participation. They are where teens practice argument, humor, creativity, solidarity, dissent — often more freely than in offline institutions that are tightly supervised, hierarchical, or unwelcoming.

Very much this, age gates are a horrible idea and this is one of the reasons. My biggest problems as a teenager were isolation and lack of agency and the internet was a small reprieve from that I really needed.