Ofcom has set out its recommendations for how social media platforms should confirm that UK users are 16 or older, as the country prepares to enforce a ban due to take effect in March that will block under-16s from ten of the biggest platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
The regulator's recommendations, which are subject to government approval, name four methods it considers "highly effective": photo ID matching against a live image, banking-based checks that draw on the age information a financial institution already holds, face age estimation technology, and digital ID services that let people prove who they are electronically.
A Harder Problem Than It Looks
Verifying that someone is over 16 but not yet 18 is unusually difficult, Ofcom acknowledged, because many teenagers in that age bracket don't yet hold credit cards, driving licences or passports, and can look noticeably older or younger than they are. A similar ban introduced in Australia last year has been widely circumvented by children there, and UK regulators say they intend to take a tougher approach, though Ofcom conceded it does not have a firm estimate of how many adult accounts will ultimately need to prove their age, beyond acknowledging it will be a "large number."
Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes said the regulator was drawing lessons from introducing age checks across the pornography industry last year. "What a lot of countries did before us was say you need to do it this way and they were very prescriptive and it didn't work," she said. "So what we've said all along is here are things that can work, they must preserve privacy, they must protect people's data, but it's on you to put in place what you think works for you."
Who Carries the Responsibility
Responsibility for implementation falls on the social networks themselves, though some companies, including Meta, have pushed for age checks to happen instead at the device or app-store level, which would shift responsibility onto Apple and Google. Ofcom has rejected the idea that device-level checks would let platforms skip their own verification; Apple has already rolled out age verification in the UK ahead of the ban.
The regulator also acknowledged that "the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated" and that some children will find ways around the checks regardless of which method platforms choose. Dawes framed enforcement as a shared effort rather than one Ofcom can guarantee alone: the agency's job, she said, is to make sure platforms put systems in place, but how people across the wider internet engage with those systems is a broader societal question.
With the March deadline approaching, platforms now have a narrow window to choose and build verification systems before millions of UK accounts are affected, and privacy advocates are expected to scrutinize whatever methods companies select for how much personal data they require.
