alt Hacker NewsBut that is still a strange argument, because IF the argument is that loot boxes are so dangerous and addictive, why can, say, a 19 years old do it but a 18 years old can not? That makes no logical sense. One year is a magical difference suddenly?
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Because you have to draw a line somewhere, if you want a line.
This same reasoning applies to sex consent, voting, driving, working.
We want to say "only qualified people can do x" but it's impossible to encode this in regulations and it always boils down to the sorites paradox.
So as a culture we have defaulted to "age is a good a proxy for being qualified".
Not just that, but this assumes that the average 18 years old has the same mental capacity as the others more or less. Bell curves clearly show the opposite
This is a bit of a silly argument, given all the precedent in real life for this sort of thing.
Can a 16 year old magically drive a car properly, but a 15 year old can't? Is an 18 year old magically much more capable doing their electoral civic duty than a 17 year old? Is a 21 year old magically able to consume alcohol responsibly, but a 20 year old isn't?
(Or whatever age cutoffs are appropriate for your jurisdiction.)
We define these cutoffs not because they are magical or apply equally to everyone, but because we have to draw the line somewhere, in cases where we aren't going to do a blanket all-ages ban. Sometimes the cutoff is chosen poorly, certainly, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the idea itself.