Today, Ofcom published its Use of Age Assurance Report 2026 – its first statutory assessment of how regulated services have used age assurance under the Online Safety Act, and how effective it has actually been. The report draws on research, Information Notices and Ofcom’s Call for Evidence, and focuses on the first six months since the protection of children duties came into force in July 2025.The findings are significant, not just for what they confirm about the current pornography, social media and dating landscape, but for what they signal about the Government’s planned social media ban for under-16s. As Ofcom puts it: age checks are working at unprecedented scale, but “the job is not done.”
Age checks are being deployed — and they’re working
The scale of change in six months is hard to overstate. Over 69 million age checks were completed across a sample of 32 services between July and December 2025, a 23-fold increase on the previous six months. The proportion of children who were asked to prove their age and encountered a highly effective check nearly doubled, from 25% to 43%. All of the UK’s top 10 pornography sites, and the majority of the top 100, now have age checks in place.
Crucially, Ofcom’s evidence suggests these checks are having the intended deterrent effect. Among the 8% of children in its study who attempted to access pornography, half only reached sites that had checks in place, and the vast majority of their visits were fleeting: 87% lasted under 30 seconds, 65% under 10 seconds. That pattern looks a lot like children being turned away, not children getting through.
Where Ofcom wants to see more from industry
Alongside the progress, the report is candid about four gaps that still need closing.
Porn sites without any checks at all. Four per cent of children in the study still reached at least one pornography service with no age assurance in place. Ofcom has already opened 23 investigations covering 88 adult services and issued fines to seven providers, and it’s clear enforcement will continue against services that haven’t acted.
Discoverability through search. 33% of first-page Google results and 54% of first-page Bing results led to porn sites with no age checks or other protections. Ofcom has secured agreement from Google and Bing to work on practical solutions here, which is likely to have a meaningful and positive impact.
Age inference on social media. Some social media platforms are relying on their own internal behavioural age inference models that were not included in Ofcom’s guidance as capable of being “highly effective.” The report says Ofcom has “serious doubts” that these models are working, and its message to those companies is to switch to a method outlined in the guidance, or prove – with reliable, compelling evidence – that what they’re using is highly effective
Inconsistent implementation elsewhere, including dating. Despite having age checks nominally in place, more than one in ten 15–17 year-olds were still using three major dating apps as of December 2025. Ofcom has stated that it wants full alignment with its guidance, including due diligence on third-party vendors, as well as wider use of challenge-age approaches and liveness detection to close the gap.
What this means for the under-16s social media ban
This report lands at a pointed moment. In June, the UK Government confirmed its intention to prevent under-16s from accessing social media, a role in which highly effective age checks will play a role in supporting. Ofcom is now set to deliver a rapid assessment to Parliament by the end of October on what “highly effective” looks like for determining whether someone is over 16, rather than over 18.
That distinction matters. Some methods that work well for an 18+ threshold, such as credit card checks aren’t suitable for 16 and 17 year-olds, so services will need other options in their toolkit. Ofcom has also been explicit that platforms’ own internal age inference algorithms are not fit for purpose here: because it can only determine age after a child has already joined and used a service.
Ofcom is also looking beyond individual services. It expects further innovation from app stores, operating systems and device manufacturers, and will publish a dedicated statutory report on the role of app stores by January 2027.
Conclusion
This report is a useful, evidence-based reality check on a debate that’s often driven by anecdote. It confirms that, when implemented properly, highly effective age assurance measures change behaviour and reduce children’s exposure to harmful content. It also confirms that a single checkpoint isn’t enough: the weakest points in the system right now are services with no checks at all, discoverability through search, and platforms leaning on internal inference methods that were never designed to carry this weight.
As the debate on under-16s’ access to social media moves toward Ofcom’s October assessment and eventual implementation, the direction of travel looks clear: a layered, whole-of-system approach, with robust, evidence-based methods at the front door rather than after the fact. That’s a conversation we’re glad to keep contributing to, and we’ll continue engaging with and supporting Ofcom as its work on both the under-16s assessment and the app store report progresses.
Get in touch if you’d like to talk through what highly effective age assurance looks like for your platform.
