The Great UK Internet Access Debate: Will Age Verification Actually Work ?

 

There is no doubt that exposure of young children to online porn and other such 'adult' material can be harmful, whether it occurs by their own choice or by accident.

The advent of the ‘always on’ internet, along with ready access to smartphones for some kids as young as 4 years old, has created a ‘perfect storm’. A number of cases in the media where problems have been highlighted has brought matters to a head recently. Older pre-teens and teenagers are also at risk of harm, but for different reasons, and access amongst these groups is rarely accidental.

The key question is – how do we manage the problem as a responsible and caring society ?

The government has seen fit to introduce a requirement for age verification via OFCOM in an attempt to restrict access to internet pornography and other 'adult' sites for anyone under 18. Will this rather draconian measure actually work ?

The answer, almost certainly is no….here are some of the reasons why, and some adverse unintended consequences that could result.….

The primary intentional audience for porn is arguably two-fold:

a)       *  teenagers, who at their time of life are programmed to explore the adult world, and are adept at finding ways to get round any restrictions put in place that they think will stop them doing so. The mating process is of prime interest to the teenage mind and sex is a key determinant of the choice of online content, particularly for the male of the species.

b)       *  an adult audience who use the sites for a variety of purposes (and not all of them particularly ‘savoury’).

Neither of these groups will be particularly keen to advertise their use of porn sites to the world, and some users may already have taken steps to conceal their browsing habits in the past, ranging from simply clearing their internet history regularly, to the use of private search engines and VPNs.

Why Age Restriction ?

The new restriction, we are told, is there to stop young children inadvertently accessing pornographic material online. It revolves around requiring users to verify their age before they can access a site where 'unsuitable' material is displayed – although the exact method for doing this for the offending sites has not yet crystallised, it will undoubtedly involve uploading confidential personal details and even key ID document images to these often rather 'suspect' sites. 

And therein lies a significant issue - few adults with a grain of sense (and I suspect also even the most impetuous early teenager !) would feel happy about releasing the confidential  personal data likely to be asked for by the sites involved. The risk that their data could easily end up being sold on via the ‘dark web’ is significant; it could even be used to steal their own ID to commit fraudulent activities in future, with a horrendous mess for them to sort out and an adverse credit record to cope with long-term. Porn sites already have a bad reputation for online security and are frequently infected with malware of various sorts, as many users have already found to their cost.

Given that not all territories will agree to subscribe to the new policy, the new UK restriction will need to be territory specific, and will have to be based on geopgraphical IP addresses. Only those with UK IP addresses will be challenged to verify their age. There is certainly no guarantee that all porn sites will comply, since many are based outside the UK and therefore not subject to UK law – presumably those that don’t cooperate will go onto a list for UK ISPs to flag as ‘no access’ for their UK servers, as has happened recently with some of the shadow eBook libraries (indeed this measure itself also resulted in a 'spike' in VPN use after its introduction). 

This inevitably means that anyone with the competence to do so will be able to get round the territorial restriction quite easily by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). There is good evidence that this is already happening - it has only been a few days since the restriction was introduced, and demand for both free and paid VPN access has already reportedly soared more than ten-fold in response. Thus the measure has effectively already failed in large measure, and as predicted, the only agents to benefit will have been the commercial VPN providers, whose profit margins will no doubt improve nicely as a result.

Quite apart from the infringement of our personal freedoms, on which Reform’s Nigel Farage has already challenged the government, there is another important adverse consequence of this measure, both for the authorities and for the parents of the kids it is supposed to protect.

Once VPNs become widely installed in the internet user community, they will no doubt be left in place permanently on smartphones and tablets. This will permanently override any territorially based restrictions (i.e. not just those imposed on porn sites). This will have commercial implications - the BBC, for one, is likely to suffer since once you have a VPN established, you’ll be able to use iPlayer from anywhere in the world by engaging a UK IP address, and won’t need to pay for access when on holiday or working abroad.  VPNs are also likely to be made more effective and easier to use, given the commercial drive the restriction will promote. Perhaps more significantly for the authorities, it will become much more difficult to locate individual users via their IP addresses, thus creating and additional law enforcement headache when it comes to UK-based cybercrime.

Voting Age vs Porn Site Access entitlement

There is also a degree of inconsistency, and dare I say it, hypocrisy on the part of government in placing a selective age restriction on porn access…the Labour leadership, in their desperation for extra votes in 2029 in their battle with Reform, have recently been quick to adopt the idea of introducing suffrage for 16-17 year olds. This is based on the assumption that the majority of this new group of eligible voters will a) bother to vote at all and b) vote Labour;  neither of these assumptions is, of course, guaranteed.

If and when they do get the vote, the block on access to porn for this group will join a long list of other things 16-17 year olds still won’t be able to do until they turn 18 – how can this apparent anomaly be justified ? 

My view is that there needs to be consistency here – either we believe teenagers are fully mature at 16, in which case we should lower the current limit from 18 to 16, in line with the legal age of consent, for everything and simply treat them as adults for legal purposes as soon as they turn 16. If, as many teenagers themselves apparently believe, we think they are not fully mature at this tender age, and should be 'protected' by society against the hazards and responsibilities of adult life for a while longer, we should reserve the right to vote, along with all the other 'adult' rights until 18, as we do currently.

Last, but certainly not least, the publicity surrounding the imposition of age restrictions will inevitably attract the attention of many people who do not habitually use porn, but who are keen to see what all the fuss is about. It's a well known psychological fact that the draw towards something that you’re no longer able to access whenever you want (even if you never normally do so) is a strong one. If anything, this measure is likely to promote the viewing of porn rather than reduce it.

How are things likely to turn out ?

We do have a useful example of how things might develop in the eBook shadow library vs publishing industry fiasco, which has been rumbling on for the past 5 years or more. This experience has clearly demonstrated that once something is out there on the net, it’s virtually impossible for the authorities to prevent access to it, whether or not it's likely to ‘deprave and corrupt’.  Even that veritable behemoth of a US institution, the FBI, haven’t been able to stop free access to eBooks, and the 'fleet of foot' shadow libraries they periodically pursue are still flourishing. No doubt the US authorities will ‘have another go’ in a year or so’s time  to keep the publishing industry off their backs, with equally negative results (they may of course have to wait until 2028 if Trump vetoes any further action on grounds of infringement of his latest 'cause celebre', free speech!). The same is likely to happen with this measure, and we’re likely to see more, rather than less, exposure of our young people to ‘things undesirable’ via the net once they all start using their VPNs...and get hooked on porn.

What has happened so far ?

Although it's very early days to get a handle on the consequences of this restriction, as already discussed, we know that there has been an immediate upsurge in the demand for VPNs. Perhaps less anticipated is a wider effect on our broadcast media - recent reports suggest that broadcast content is now being much more actively screened to avoid possibile legal challenges. This suggests the act has already overshot its intended purpose and effectvely introduced a form of censorship which is not age related as intended. Some may regard this as the 'thin end of the wedge'. We need to decide as a society whether we are prepared to tolerate yet another infringement of our civil rights by an increasingly authoritarian government.

What should we actually be doing to keep our young people safe?

In my view, the only effective way of managing the pron problem, and the multitude of other active online threats to our youngsters’ well-being is by education. And I use the word in a relatively broad sense here. 

Society as a whole has a responsibility to instil in its youth a strong moral code and a respect for authority and the law. Without this, anarchy beckons.

Thus, we all have a responsibility to encourage development of these positive traits in our young people. 

Our schools (yes, private as well as state-sponsored) have a key role in mentoring their charges while they are attending, and thus helping to provide them with appropriate social and moral skills as well as the body of knowledge to help them through their adult lives. For many reasons, however, schools and colleges cannot take sole responsibility for the task. 

It is ultimately a child’s parents who will have the pivotal role in ensuring their offspring make it to adulthood in a good position to deal with the hazards of modern life…of which there are many…and growing day by day.

We should also remember that today’s delinquent teenagers are the ones most at risk of becoming tomorrow’s criminals…and even in some sad cases, terrorists and knife murderers. To avoid them falling into the ‘crime trap’, and becoming an additional financial burden on the state, the secret is to ‘catch them young’, and ensure any bad habits are snuffed out before they become engrained in during the teenage years and are then much more difficult to eradicate.

Easier said than done, the concerned and over-burdened parent would no doubt say....

Parenthood is undoubtedly a huge responsibility, and should never be entered into lightly – it’s just too important for the well-being of the kids and the society they will inhabit. We should be actively supporting those who do make the choice to take on this awesome responsibility as best we can; we should also discourage those who are not in a position to do so safely and effectively from taking the plunge. 

We should offer training and advice throughout the child-rearing process, and this will mean boosting our beleaguered and cash-strapped social services sector in future. We should also be firmer with those parents (fortunately relatively few) who abdicate their responsibilities and just let their kids run riot. All parents have a legal responsibility for their offspring’s actions at least until they reach the age of legal consent (16), and the courts should be prepared, and enabled, to enforce this rule more rigorously.

Reeves’ Austerity 2.0 ‘package’ is a good example of how not to manage this problem…it has already imposed far too many financial penalties to rearing offspring, and is still starving the ‘social’ sector of funds, and deterring further recruitment throughout the social care sector via the October NI and minimum wage increases. It is to be hoped that Labour back-benchers can eventually engineer a u-turn on the current 2-child cap policy on universal credit. There also needs to be active recognition of the importance of the childcare and mentoring functions in enabling parents to earn a decent living while bringing up their kids properly.

Is there anything I could do as a parent now that would help keep my kids safe?

One obvious move that all parents could make today to protect their pre-teens against online threats is to ensure they don’t have personal access to an internet enabled tablet or smartphone. Most of us would accept that 3 and 4 year olds should never be allowed unsupervised access to the net, since the vast majority of exposure to porn occurs via these devices. By all means let them have offline tablets to play with, and where absolutely necessary, a simple phone for text and calls home. Schools have quite rightly already started to ban the use of smartphones and tablets completely on their premises during school hours for all pupils, in recognition of the inevitable distraction they cause in class, both to the user and their fellow students. Primary school staff could also help enforce parental control here by reporting, or even confiscating, any such devices found to be being accessed by pupils below a certain age, and returning them directly to parents.

Final Thoughts

The arguments against 'blanket' age-restriction of online access to adult content are overwhelming, and we have seen how such measures can actually cause more harm than good. Undoubtedly we have a duty as a society to protect our young people from harm until they reach 'full' maturity, but there are far more effective ways of doing this. There is also a decision to be made as to when we think someone truly becomes an adult, and able to deal effectively with online threats. 

The role of the state should be that of a facilitator rather than enforcer, ensuring that those best able to influence and manage their offspring (i.e. their parents) have the tools, knowledge and opportunity to do so effectively.

Have our government ‘dropped another lammy’ with this one ? 

I suspect they may well have….time, as always, will tell

First published 31.7.25; Revised 6.8.25