Over the past few decades, the rapid expansion of the internet has seen the digital space become increasingly dangerous — particularly for impressionable young people. This year’s searing drama Adolescence was a sobering reminder of just how real a threat an unregulated digital space can be: it’s terrifyingly easy for young people to find themselves falling victim to extremist rhetoric. Plus, image-based abuse is rife, social media is both addictive and detrimental to mental health, and porn is a mere click away.

This is the worrying online landscape we are dealing with — and it’s no great secret that the government has always been several very big steps behind when it comes to putting safety measures into place. Today marks a major step forwards in the movement to make the internet a little more safe for young people — from today, the new Ofcom porn safety codes mean that porn websites will be required to implement a rigorous age verification process to ensure that children can’t access explicit adult content. That’s right, the days of quickly ticking an “I’m over 18” box are a thing of the past.

But what do the new regulations actually mean?

What exactly are the new regulations?

According to Ofcom, the new rules state that “all sites and apps that allow pornography will need to have strong age checks in place.” This means that websites will likely carry out processes involving credit card checks, photo ID matching and/or estimating age using a selfie. Ofcom likens the age checks to being IDed before purchasing alcohol or tobacco.

Why are they being put in place?

The new guidelines are intended to reduce the number of underaged people who come across adult content online.

“New research from Ofcom has found that eight per cent of children aged 8-14 in the UK visited an online porn site or app in a month – including around 3% of 8–9-year-olds – the youngest children in the study,” Ofcom reports, adding, “Boys aged 13-14 were mostly likely to visit a porn service, significantly more than girls the same age.”

What will the Ofcom porn safety codes mean in practice?

Websites that offer porn will have to provide a reliable, robost method to check the user’s age. This method may vary from site to site and could include:

• Facial age estimation
• Open banking
• Digital identity services
• Credit card age checks
• Email-based age estimation
• Mobile network operator age checks
• Photo-ID matching

Will the Ofcom porn safety codes actually change how people consume porn?

There has already been some discussion about just how effective the new rules will be in practice.

For one thing, Pornhub has already suggested that they don’t technically count as a “porn website,” because instead of producing and publishing content themselves, they allow users to upload their own content. Since then, however, Pornhub has agreed to implement government-approved age checks.

Some people have also suggested that getting around the age checks will be possible using VPNs.

Worryingly, Ofcom noted that children using a VPN to access the internet “would not be able to benefit from the protections of the Online Safety Act”.