Since the Industry Guidance came into effect at the end of July, requiring stronger age verification measures for accessing pornographic websites in the UK, traffic to these sites has significantly decreased.

According to data from web analytics firm SimilarWeb, the UK’s most visited site of this kind experienced a 47% decline in visitor numbers in just two weeks following the implementation of age controls, falling from 3.2 million to 2 million.

Other platforms offering the same type of content saw similar declines: one specialising in videos fell by a half, while OnlyFans, the popular subscription service where users often upload and consume pornographic content, experienced a 10% decline. 

Small companies and VNP use

Despite the widespread decline of major adult content providers on the internet, smaller, less regulated websites have experienced an increase in traffic, and the regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries (Ofcom) is still investigating four companies managing more than 30 websites with pornographic content to assess compliance.

Furthermore, the implementation of the law coincided with a tenfold rise in the usage of virtual private networks (VPNs), which allows the users to hide their geographical location, and they may be using it to avoid access controls.

CARE: “Our children deserve a porn free childhood”

For Tim Cairns, Online Safety Lead for the Christian charity in the UK, CARE, “these new figures are hardly a surprise because if you make porn harder to access, then you’d expect to see a drop in users. What is critical to note is this means thousands of children have been rightly prevented from seeing porn online”.

“Thanks to age verification, we’ve gone from a situation where kids as young as 13 were accidently stumbling across porn online to one where the UK’s most popular porn site has seen traffic fall by nearly 50%”.

CARE urges Ofcom to “go after any porn site that is failing to comply with the new law. Our children deserve a porn free childhood”.

Age verification around Europe

The debate on age verification for adult websites is ongoing throughout Europe.

In May, the European Commission selected Spain for a pilot project to develop an age verification tool to protect minors from online adult content, such as pornography. This came after the Spanish government developed the Digital Wallet Beta app, which is designed to verify that users who want to access pornographic websites are of legal age.

In Italy, it is mandatory to install parental controls on mobile phones purchased in the name of minors, but this does not prevent them from using other adults' phones.

France is exploring the implementation of a system similar to the Spanish one. In 2023, the French National Assembly approved a draft law to allow the administrative authority to block pornographic sites that do not prevent minors from accessing their content.

European Parliament

Furthermore, last June the European Parliament added a last-minute amendment in its directive on child sexual abuse, to force pornographic websites to put in place “robust and effective age verification tools to effectively prevent children from accessing pornographic content online”.

“Disseminating pornographic content online without this requirement being met, shall be punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 1 year”, reads the amendment.