British Adult Content Site Visits Falls After Age Checks, But VPN Usage Surges, Reports Watchdog

Access to pornography platforms in the UK has seen a notable drop after the introduction of mandatory age verification earlier this year, as reported by the country's communications watchdog. Concurrently, the use of specialist software designed to circumvent these restrictions has increased.

Immediate Drop in User Numbers After Rule Enforcement

The introduction of age verification on 25 July led to an swift reduction in visits to major online adult platforms, such as the top site in the UK. Figures indicates that visitor numbers to this site in August reached 9.8 million, a decrease of 1.5 million from the equivalent month in 2024.

Overall, visitor numbers to the ten most-visited adult services in the UK have now stabilized at a “lower level” than prior to the late July deadline. Subsequent data suggests this slump in site visits continued beyond August.

Sharp Increase in Virtual Private Network Adoption to Bypass Restrictions

In response to the new regulations, adoption of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)—which can bypass location-based blocks by masking internet traffic through another country—surged following 25 July.

Usage peaked at over 1.4 million in mid-August, rising from around 650,000 people before the checks were introduced. Subsequently, the watchdog noted that VPN usage has afterwards decreased, with latest figures at around 900,000. It added that the volume of regular VPN use remains “much lower” than traffic for adult services.

Young People Responding to Damaging Material

In other findings, the watchdog's report found that about 60% of teenagers aged 11 to 17 had acted after seeing distressing content online. Steps taken ranged from reporting the content to the platform to muting the user who posted it.

This survey was conducted before new rules came into force that compel platforms to prevent children from seeing dangerous content, such as material related to suicide and pornography. The most common way teenagers came across such content was by scrolling through a social media timeline, suggesting that recommendation systems were serving harmful material.

Government Launch Review of Pornography Laws

Separately, the government stated it would examine the legislation governing pornography to consider whether it is “fit for purpose” in the modern digital age.

“The review will look into the effectiveness of the current law in regarding criminalising, for example, damaging depictions of familial abuse and any types of pornography which encourage the abuse of children,” stated a government official.

Campaigners Call For Stricter Digital Controls

Advocates for better control of online pornography have urged the government to outlaw so-called “barely legal” material. This encompasses content featuring incest scenes or that appears to promote child sexual abuse by casting youthful adults dressed as children.

Proposed changes to legislation aim to:

• Ban pornography where adults are mimicking children, sometimes recorded in environments like children’s bedrooms.
• Extend the crime of making an exploitative portrayal of a child to cover material where an adult acts the part of a child.
• Apply stricter regulation on familial abuse pornography, which studies indicates is heavily recommended by platform algorithms.
• Introduce further controls on “nudification” software, potentially making it an illegal act to possess tools designed to generate non-consensual nude images.
• Create a new, independent oversight agency to perform inspections on pornography sites and act on complaints of unlawful content.

The advocates contend that these measures would ensure the safeguards that have existed for years offline finally apply to the digital age.