By July 2025, the internet will never be the same for millions of UK residents.

Pornographic sites must adopt age verification measures in the next seven months, according to new guidance from Ofcom. Social media sites may be following close behind.

Age verification is the process by which internet users prove that they’re over 18 - a process intended to protect children from accessing adult content.

But how does age verification work? And more importantly, will it work?

Children and online harms

Many of us know the feeling of standing at the self-checkout with a bottle of wine, sheepishly waiting for a supermarket attendant to check our ID and confirm we’re over 18.

But imagine how many attendants would be needed if they had to swipe their cards for everyone browsing content online. Millions upon millions of people are accessing content from their bedrooms - with nary a supermarket checkout in sight.

So why the trouble? Because protecting children is important.

"These are such common sense amendments. But vital - which will ensure children are prevented from accessing the most high-risk sites..."
Rt Revd Dr Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford speaking in the House of Lords, Tuesday 23 May 2023

“Kids are naturally curious, and with the ease of access to technology, they might inadvertently encounter inappropriate material,” said Sofie Sharpe, a Nottinghamshire-based mother of two young children.

“I am glad they’re making adult content harder to access.”

She highlighted that age checks today simply need users to tick a box saying they’re over 18, or enter an easily-falsified date of birth.

“It just relies heavily on kids doing the right thing if faced with inappropriate content.”

“Current safeguarding guides around content on the internet relies heavily on having discussions with your children and an element of trust. But that doesn’t ensure protection of kids.

The age self-certification page that Pornhub currently displays. 8.4 million UK online adults visited Pornhub in May 2024.

How will it work?

From July 2025, visitors to porn sites may have to open up their camera and take a photo of themselves. Thankfully these photos will only be of their faces, and AI-powered technology will estimate the age of the visitor based on their appearance.

“We use our technology to understand, based on the facial features of this person, what could be their probable age,” said Geo Jolly, Lead Product Manager (Biometrics) at Veriff.

Beyond its uses on the internet, he’s had conversations with big supermarket chains across the UK to add age estimation to self-checkout terminals - reducing the time needed for an attendant to check an ID.

The strength of this system is its convenience. No passports or documents needed.

Jolly explained: “The user experience is very key. And that's where biometrics is usually preferred. Because it's intuitive - everyone is used to taking selfies."

He admits though: “Of course, it's not 100% correct all the time.”

This technology can typically also make sure the face in front of them is real. This ‘liveness check’ means that the system won’t be tricked by a child holding up an image of an adult, for example.

If websites want a system with less margin for error, Veriff can also help them to verify age through a scan of passports or driver's license. The technology can pick out a user's date of birth information and make sure that they're over 18.

QUIZ

Can you estimate a person's age better than an AI?

*tested using real age estimation technology

An alternative way to verify age is through an open banking system, where the website connects with your bank to check certain details about your identity, including age.

This system was adopted by the dating app Sizzl, a UK-founded company that is “the safest dating app in the market today,” according to its co-founder Phil Beesley.

The app requires every user to connect their bank with the app, verifying they’re over 18 and ensuring that they’re not a scammer or a bot.

Before Sizzl, Beesley had experience with a verification system where users were required to send a selfie - sometimes holding up their ID.

But in circumstances where the lighting would be too dark, for example, Beesley’s team would have to manually verify these images. This was a clunky process for the users and the platform, he shared.

Beesley said: “We were losing a lot of users because they couldn't be bothered to wait and they would delete the app.

“And by the time we got back to them, they never responded.”

But with this new system of open banking, it takes just a few seconds and clicks to have all the necessary information confirmed. The drop-off rates have since improved, Beesley highlighted.

The only problem is that some users don’t feel comfortable connecting their dating app to their bank, worried it will take other information such as their bank balance, for example.

Beesley said: “It's up to us to educate those users. The bank only provides us with your age and confirms that you're a real person because you've got a bank account. Nothing else.”

A threat to privacy and freedom of speech?

The need to protect children from inappropriate content is paramount, but questions remain on whether age verification is the way to do that, and what we’re willing to sacrifice to get there.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts website Wikipedia, has already voiced its concerns about the government’s Online Safety Bill, where these age verification regulations originate.

The laws would require Wikipedia to restrict underage users from encountering any 'unacceptable content' amidst its millions of pages of educational material.

“In an attempt to weed out the worst parts of the internet, the Online Safety Bill actually jeopardises the best parts of the internet"
Lucy Crompton-Reid, Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK & Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation

To enforce these restrictions, Wikiepdia would need to gather data about its users.

Restrictions they say will violate the Wikimedia Foundation's principles on privacy.

Screenshot of a BBC News article highlighting the issues between Wikipedia and age verification laws

Tom Harwood of GB News raises his concerns about the new age verification measures coming to pornographic sites

James Baker of Open Rights Group gives his take on the new online safety regulations coming into place

A TikTok user highlights issues with age verification that she's faced on the social media app

These concerns are shared by the London-based Open Rights Group. Its campaigns focus on digital rights, arguing that technology should support justice, equality and freedom.

If age verification measures do become commonplace, one risk is that there will be a growth in related scams, according to James Baker, the group’s Campaigns and Grassroots Activism Manager.

For example, internet users may unwittingly share identity documents with a fake website that has been created to steal this sensitive information.

Baker said: “They've now uploaded their passport onto a fake site. That scammer has then got their identity documents that they could use for identity theft. So there's clear risks involved in some forms of age verification.”

When it comes to pornographic sites, he pointed out: “Let's be realistic, teenagers are going to want to look at pornography, and if they're blocked from looking at it through legitimate means - then they're going to come across other ways of accessing it.”

Pushing under-18s to use the dark web to access pornography may cause them even more harm than the status quo, for example.

Correctly identifying what constitutes pornography is another challenge. Baker has seen sexual advice and LGBT+ charities being blocked by some internet service providers for merely mentioning sex and gender terms in a non-erotic context.

Concerns only continue when it comes to other websites outside of pornography. Most sites will have two realistic choices to continue operating under new online safety regulations, Baker says.

Firstly, some sites will take the easy option and implement a total age verification check. This means that all the content inside will be locked away from under-18s, even if that information may be valuable and appropriate for children.

The alternative is that sites are totally sanitised of any content that could be deemed inappropriate, requiring significant levels of moderation in some cases.

Both of these outcomes present concerns about freedom of information. How will teenagers access information that has been kept out of their reach? How will they learn about difficult topics if that information has been censored from the internet?

Questions still remain about websites hosted outside of the UK, as the new laws will apply to sites with a significant number of UK visitors. Rather than go through the rigmarole of adopting age verification, some websites could just block every visitor from the UK, Baker highlighted.

An international movement

The UK isn't the only country that has recognised age verification as a tool for protecting children online.

Here are some notable age verification regulations that have been put in place globally:

Effective from the first day of 2025, the Protect Tennessee Minors Act requires websites that contain a “substantial portion of material harmful to minors” to adopt age verification tools.

These materials include nudity and sexual acts, that “when taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors”.

Florida’s new Online Protections for Minors law requires websites or apps to prohibit minors from accessing “harmful” materials.

Verification can be done anonymously or through methods that require identifying the individual.

Currently making its way through Canada’s House of Commons is a bill that requires organisations to adopt a prescribed age-verification method to limit access to sexually explicit material for under-18s.

The first offence will incur a fine of no more than $250,000, which will rise to no more than $500,000 for subsequent offences.

The German Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media stipulates a number of ways to limit children from accessing sexually explicit material.

These methods include age verification, and clearly stated labelled on age-inappropriate content.

New plans from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority will require app stores to introduce age verification in order to prevent under-18s from downloading apps that are not suitable for them.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 introduces a mandatory minimum age of 16 for accounts on certain social media platforms.

It puts the onus on websites and apps to create these age gates - with no penalties for teens who manage to sneak through or their parents / guardians.

The next steps

Ofcom’s recent statement said: “All services which allow pornography must have highly effective age assurance in place by July 2025 at the latest to prevent children from accessing it.”

And while some may not admit it - this change will impact millions of UK residents. According to Ofcom, 29% UK online adults accessed a porn service in May 2024 - totalling nearly 14 million people.

The government body also made new requests upon ‘Part 3’ services, which “include those that host user-generated content, such as social media, tube sites, cam sites, and fan platforms.”

These user-to-user sites will have to complete an assessment by April 2025 of how likely children will be to access their platform. Some may then need to implement age verification, dependent on yet-to-be released guidance from Ofcom.

How Ofcom will enforce these new regulations still remains to be seen. It has already fined UK-based adult site MintStars after its child protection measures were found to be insufficient.

For the general public, we now have to sit and wait as the regulators and website developers sort out how this new era of the internet will work.

In the meantime, the public should start considering which form of age verification we feel most comfortable with. And hold out hope that our favourite websites won’t be changed completely.

Photo credits: Unsplash, Canva, Pexels, Sean Nolan