Adult content
In effect
- Bill / statute
- Online Safety Act 2023
- Status
- Active law in effect
- Effective
- Jul 25, 2025
- Intrusiveness
- Severe -- Criminal penalties, VPN targeting, or repeated re-checks with long data retention.
Online Safety Act 2023 (Royal Assent Oct 2023). Since July 25, 2025, services that host pornography or other content harmful to children must use "highly effective age assurance" -- typically a photo-ID upload, credit-card check, or facial-age estimation -- to keep under-18s out. Enforced by Ofcom, which by Feb 2026 had opened 90+ investigations and issued fines; some sites (e.g. Pornhub/Aylo) instead blocked UK users. The same duty pushed major platforms (Reddit, X, Discord, Bluesky) to add age checks.
Sources: gov.uk · ofcom.org.uk
Social media
Pending
- Bill / statute
- Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (under-16 social-media plan)
- Status
- Bill pending, no law yet
- Effective
- Planned spring 2027 (approx.)
- Intrusiveness
- High -- Broad reach: low or no content threshold, device/OS-level, or bundled with other verification.
The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Royal Assent Apr 29, 2026) created powers to restrict under-16s' access to social media and to set the data-processing age of consent (13-16). On June 15, 2026 the government announced a ban on under-16s opening social-media accounts, enforced by ID upload or facial-age scan, targeted for spring 2027. Binding regulations are still being drafted, so this is a committed plan rather than an in-force requirement.
Source: dlapiper.com
