This is a recent, well-documented change, and unusually for this subject the numbers come from a regulator rather than a forum.
From 25 July 2025 the Online Safety Act required pornography platforms serving the UK to use highly effective age assurance. In its first half-year report Ofcom counted 69 million-plus age checks across the 32 services it sampled, confirmed checks on all of the top ten sites by UK traffic, and found the proportion of children encountering an effective check rose from 25% before the deadline to 43% by January 2026.
The same period saw a spike in VPN downloads, which is the predictable other half of the story. A check that works on the open web does not work on a tunnelled connection, and the law did not change what adults can do.
What the law did not settle is privacy. Age assurance means handing an identity signal to a third party before viewing something most people consider private, and whether the assurance providers are trustworthy custodians is a live question rather than a closed one. For an adult, the practical effect is friction, and friction is not nothing: every extra step between cue and behaviour is a step in which the wave can crest.
Where this comes from
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Sources and how strong they are (2)
- Well establishedFrom 25 July 2025 the UK Online Safety Act required "highly effective age assurance" on pornography platforms. Ofcom reported 69M+ age checks across 32 sampled services in H2 2025, checks on all top-ten UK sites, and children encountering effective checks rising from 25% to 43% between July 2025 and January 2026. VPN downloads spiked.Ofcom 2026, statutory report on age assurance
- Mixed evidenceIncreasing the friction of a behaviour - moving the cue further away, reducing availability, breaking the sequence that leads to it - reduces how often it occurs. The direction is consistently found and the effects are moderate, but the evidence is graded low-certainty, comes mostly from short laboratory studies of food, and has never been compared head-to-head with intention-based approaches. What is separately well established is that intentions on their own translate weakly into behaviour.Hollands et al. 2019, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews CD012573.pub3, doi:10.1002/14651858.CD012573.pub3, PMID 31482606
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