One actor verifies ages - and they only need to do so once. Sites give users a key tied to their user account to run by their verifier, who returns another key that attests to their verified age encoded for that specific site, to give back to the site.
The site doesn't know anything about the user, but their user login info. The verifier doesn't know anything about what sites are being visited.
This would seem to address the issues, without creating the pervasive privacy and security problems of every age verifying site creating database of people's government id's, faces, and other personal information.
It also seems like a way out of the legal/legislatorial battle. Which otherwise, is going to be an immortal hydra.
I would trust the EFF to run something like this. Open source. With only one-way encrypted/hashed personal info stored at their end.
(I am not a cryptographic expert. But I believe mechanisms like this are straightforward stuff at this point.)