> Would a child have access to a paid VPN like Mullvad anyway, I wonder.

Sure. Why not? Paid VPNs are cheap to use, and kids are smart.

A kid who already has a computer to use can turn a relatively large amount of electricity into a relatively small amount of crypto, and can do so very informally. It's usually a money-losing operation, but that matters less when a person is (say) 14 and someone else pays the electric bill: Out of sight, out of mind.

After that: Simply use the proceeds to pay for something like Mullvad or AirVPN (they accept crypto payments just fine).

It's been quite a long time since I was 14 and it was a very different world back then, but I don't think I would have had any trouble connecting these dots at that age.

(And indeed, that's how I used to pay for my own VPN service as a grown adult back when using those things was a lot less common. Rather than potentially draw unwanted interest from my bank by making international payments, I'd just mine some crypto to cover the VPN, and pay the electric bill. It wasn't strictly anonymous or untraceable or anything like that, but it did help cover the tracks that I cared about covering.)