Eight per cent of children aged 8-14 in the UK visited an online porn site or app in a month – including around 3% of 8–9-year-olds – the youngest children in the study.
The research from the Media regulator OFCOM comes as Children in the UK will gain increased protection from online pornography next month as major providers agree to bring in robust methods to check users’ age for the first time.
By 25 July, all sites and apps that allow pornography – whether they are dedicated adult sites or social media, search or gaming services – must use highly effective age checks to ensure children are not normally able to encounter it. Online firms who publish their own pornography are already required to protect children from it, and thousands of sites have already introduced robust age checks in response.
Major porn providers operating in the UK have confirmed to Ofcom that they will introduce effective checks by next month’s deadline in order to comply with the new rules[1]. They include PornHub, the most-visited pornographic service in the UK [2]. Other services who are happy to be named at this stage include BoyfriendTV, Cam4, FrolicMe, inxxx, Jerkmate, LiveHDCams, MyDirtyHobby, RedTube, Streamate, Stripchat, Tube8, and YouPorn. This represents a broad range of pornography services accessed in the UK.
Monitoring compliance with these new duties is a priority for Ofcom. If any company fails to comply with its new duties, Ofcom can impose fines and – in very serious cases – apply for a court order to prevent the site or app from being available in the UK. As part of our work enforcing the Online Safety Act, we have already launched investigations into four porn providers and won’t hesitate to take further action from July.
Ofcom’s research tracked the use of websites and apps by 8–14-year-olds across smartphones, tablets and computers over a month. Boys aged 13-14 (19%) were mostly likely to visit a porn service, significantly more than girls the same age (11%). With older teenagers also likely accessing pornography, the total number of under-18s exposed to adult content will be higher still.
Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom Group Director of Online Safety said: “Society has long protected youngsters from products that aren’t suitable for them, from alcohol to smoking or gambling. But for too long children have been only a click away from harmful pornography online.
“Now, change is happening. These age checks will bring pornography into line with how we treat adult services in the real world, without compromising access and privacy for over-18s.”
