There's fake protecting children and there's real protecting children. The Colorado and California parental controls API laws (not age verification laws, there is no age verification in these laws) are clearly "real protecting children" since all they do is mandate standardisation of a parental controls API on each OS.
We kept saying parental controls are all that's really needed, these states said "ok then, do parental controls" and we're still complaining.
Who's we? I personally taught my kid to lie about their age so they don't get silly censorship on the internet.
If there is such widespread demand for such mechanisms as some comments suggest, why did it take coercion through law making to bring it to market?