13 years, The Age of Adulthood?

I thought I would delve a little deeper into the motivations behind the ‘global’ 13 year old age restriction against accessing to online databases, forums and social networks.

At first glance it seems the purpose of the safety restriction is to prevent ‘children’ from accessing sites that are socially unacceptable or dangerous; pornography sites and other X-rated materials. Those 13 years old and above are entitled to because they have passed ‘childhood’ and hence mature enough to access these sites.

But remember what you were like at 13? Most likely a socially unaware, immature child. Big kids were 16 and adults were only good for candy money. So why does this restriction exist?
The age restriction has roots in US law. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 was created because parents wanted to safeguard the personal details of children to prevent ‘certain companies’ from collecting and selling their details.

Its stated purpose is “to protect children from micro-targeting by advertisers and to minimize the potential for contact with dangerous individuals through chat rooms, e-mail, and bulletin boards by involving parents in kids' on-line activities.”

Children are allowed to give out information with parental permission but most websites just prevent access all together due to the amount of paper work involved

So what seems like an interesting meme, a hilariously wrong and repeated judgement of a 13 year olds temperament, is actually a boring law that dominates the Western online world as a consequence of the US internet monopoly.