British Adult Content Traffic Declines Following Identity Verifications, Yet VPN Use Surges, Reports Watchdog

Access to adult content sites in the UK has seen a notable drop since the roll-out of age-checking measures earlier this year, according to the country's communications authority. Simultaneously, the adoption of specialist software designed to circumvent these restrictions has surged.

Immediate Fall in User Figures After Law Implementation

The enforcement of age verification on 25 July caused an immediate fall in visits to popular online adult platforms, including the leading provider in the UK. Figures shows that visitor numbers to this platform in August were 9.8 million, a decline of 1.5 million compared to the equivalent month in 2024.

Overall, visitor numbers to the 10 top adult services in the UK have now stabilized at a significantly reduced level than prior to the end-of-July deadline. Later analysis shows this downward trend in viewing persisted beyond August.

Surge in Virtual Private Network Usage to Evade Restrictions

Reacting to the new regulations, use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)—which can circumvent location-based blocks by masking connections via another country—more than doubled following 25 July.

User numbers reached a high at more than 1.4 million in the middle of August, up from approximately 650,000 people before the checks were introduced. However, the regulator noted that VPN usage has since steadily declined, with current numbers standing at around 900,000. It clarified that the volume of daily VPN use remains “much lower” than user numbers for pornography sites.

Young People Responding to Damaging Online Content

Elsewhere, the regulator's annual study revealed that about 60% of young people aged 11 to 17 had taken action after encountering distressing content on the internet. Actions included flagging the content to the platform to muting the user who shared it.

This survey was carried out before new regulations came into force that require social media companies to prevent children from accessing dangerous content, including material related to suicide and adult material. The most common way young people came across such content was by scrolling through a social media timeline, indicating that recommendation systems were serving harmful material.

Ministers Launch Review of Pornography Laws

In a related development, the ministers announced it would review the legislation relating to pornography to assess whether it is adequate in the ever-developing digital age.

“The review will look into the effectiveness of the existing law in relation to criminalising, for example, harmful portrayals of familial abuse and any types of pornography which promote child sexual abuse,” stated a government official.

Advocates Push For Tighter Online Controls

Advocates for tighter control of online pornography have urged the authorities to outlaw so-called “barely legal” material. This includes content featuring simulated familial abuse or that appears to promote abuse by using young-looking adults portraying children.

Proposed amendments to government bills aim to:

• Ban pornography where performers are mimicking children, often filmed in settings like children’s bedrooms.
• Extend the offence of making an exploitative portrayal of a child to cover material where an older performer plays the role of a child.
• Apply stricter regulation on familial abuse pornography, which research indicates is often promoted by platform algorithms.
• Introduce additional restrictions on “nudification” technology, potentially making it an illegal act to possess tools designed to generate non-consensual nude images.
• Create a new, separate oversight agency to perform spot checks on adult platforms and respond to reports of unlawful content.

The advocates contend that these steps would ensure the safeguards that have existed for decades in the physical world finally apply to the online sphere.