Yeah, that sounds like narratively speaking it’d be easier to pull off than becoming a threat to a nation-state. Escape is far more believable and feasible. Still difficult though, as it depends on your world building in regards to the nature of the authoritarian regime. Specifically, are levels of oppression within this fictional regime to the point where even the use of digital anonymity tools is severely scrutinized/punished? Or can the child character claim a legitimate reason to use said tools?

As I said in my previous response, it’s unrealistic that the parents wouldn’t be able to see that their kid was using Tor/VPN to access…something. Can you conceive of some excuse said kid would use should their parents confront the child about said use? Would they outright confront the kid or would they use other tactics to discern what was going on?

Ultimately you either have to make this very believable by utilizing extensive research into the technologies and sociopolitical dynamics involved in the plot, or you have to expand the world into sci-fi so that you can expand the amount of suspension of disbelief you are then able to ask of your audience. Or some mixture of the two I guess.

As a fan of Mr. Robot, I’m more keen on going as realistic as possible (and even Mr. Robot had moments of large amounts of suspension of disbelief), but ultimately it’s up to you which route you’d like to take.