British Adult Content Site Visits Declines After Age Verifications, But VPN Usage Spikes, States Watchdog

Visitor numbers to pornography sites in the United Kingdom has fallen significantly since the enforcement of mandatory age verification earlier this year, according to the nation's communications watchdog. At the same time, the usage of tools designed to bypass these blocks has surged.

Immediate Drop in Visitor Figures After Rule Implementation

The enforcement of age verification on 25 July resulted in an prompt reduction in traffic to leading pornography sites, such as the most visited site in the UK. Data shows that user traffic to this platform in August stood at 9.8 million, a decrease of 1.5 million from the equivalent month in 2024.

In total, traffic to the ten top adult services in the UK have now settled at a significantly reduced level than prior to the end-of-July implementation date. Subsequent analysis shows this downward trend in site visits continued past August.

Sharp Increase in VPN Adoption to Evade Checks

In response to the new rules, use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)—which can get around geographic blocks by masking connections through another nation—increased dramatically following 25 July.

User numbers reached a high at more than 1.4 million in mid-August, rising from approximately 650,000 users before the checks were introduced. Subsequently, the regulator noted that VPN usage has since steadily declined, with latest numbers standing at around 900,000. It clarified that the volume of regular VPN use remains “much lower” than traffic for pornography services.

Teenagers Taking Action to Damaging Online Content

Elsewhere, the regulator's annual study revealed that about 60% of teenagers aged 11 to 17 had acted after encountering damaging content on the internet. Actions ranged from flagging the material to the site to blocking the user who shared it.

This survey was carried out prior to new regulations took effect that require social media companies to stop children from seeing dangerous content, including material related to suicide and pornography. The most common way teenagers encountered such content was by scrolling through a platform timeline, indicating that algorithms were serving inappropriate material.

Government Announce Examination of Adult Content Legislation

Separately, the government announced it would review the criminal law 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, among other things, damaging depictions of familial abuse and any types of pornography which encourage the abuse of children,” said a justice minister.

Campaigners Call For Stricter Online Controls

Campaigners for better control of adult content have called on the authorities to outlaw so-called “barely legal” material. This encompasses content featuring incest scenes or that appears to promote abuse by casting young-looking adults portraying children.

Proposed amendments to legislation aim to:

• Ban pornography where performers are impersonating children, sometimes recorded in environments like children’s bedrooms.
• Extend the crime of creating an exploitative portrayal of a child to cover material where an older performer plays the role of a child.
• Apply stricter controls on incest-themed pornography, which studies indicates is often promoted by platform systems.
• Introduce further controls on “nudification” technology, potentially making it an illegal act to own software designed to generate non-consensual nude images.
• Create a new, separate regulatory body to perform inspections on pornography sites and act on complaints of unlawful content.

The campaigners argue that these steps would ensure the safeguards that have existed for years offline finally apply to the digital age.