British Adult Content Site Visits Declines After Age Checks, Yet VPN Use Surges, Reports Watchdog

Traffic to pornography websites in the United Kingdom has decreased markedly after the enforcement of age-checking measures this summer, as reported by the nation's communications authority. Simultaneously, the adoption of tools designed to dodge these barriers has increased.

Immediate Drop in User Numbers After Rule Enforcement

The introduction of age verification on 25 July resulted in an swift reduction in traffic to leading pornography sites, such as the most visited provider in the UK. Figures reveals that user traffic to this platform in August were 9.8 million, a decrease of 1.5 million compared to the same period in 2024.

Overall, traffic to the 10 top adult services in the UK have now settled at a “lower level” than before the late July implementation date. Later analysis indicates this downward trend in site visits continued past August.

Surge in VPN Adoption to Bypass Restrictions

In response to the new rules, use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)—which can circumvent location-based restrictions by masking connections via another nation—increased dramatically following 25 July.

User numbers reached a high at over 1.4 million in mid-August, rising from approximately 650,000 users prior to the verification began. Subsequently, the regulator noted that VPN usage has afterwards decreased, with current figures standing at around 900,000. It added that the volume of daily VPN use remains “much lower” than traffic for adult services.

Young People Responding to Harmful Material

Elsewhere, the watchdog's annual study found that about 60% of teenagers aged 11 to 17 had taken action after seeing damaging content online. Steps taken ranged from flagging the material to the site to blocking the person who shared it.

This research 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 self-harm and pornography. The most common way teenagers encountered such content was by scrolling through a social media timeline, indicating that recommendation systems were serving inappropriate material.

Ministers Announce Examination of Pornography Laws

Separately, the government stated it would review the legislation relating to pornography to consider whether it is adequate in the ever-developing online world.

“The examination will investigate 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,” stated a justice minister.

Campaigners Call For Tighter Digital Controls

Advocates for better regulation of adult content have called on the government to outlaw so-called “barely legal” material. This encompasses content featuring incest scenes or that appears to promote child sexual abuse by using young-looking adults dressed as children.

Proposed changes to government bills aim to:

• Prohibit pornography where performers are impersonating children, sometimes recorded in environments like children’s bedrooms.
• Extend the offence of creating an exploitative portrayal of a child to cover material where an older performer acts the part of a child.
• Introduce stricter controls on incest-themed pornography, which studies indicates is heavily recommended by platform systems.
• Add additional controls on “nudification” technology, potentially making it an illegal act to own software designed to create private images without permission.
• Create a new, independent regulatory body to conduct spot checks on adult platforms and act on reports of illegal content.

The advocates argue that these steps would ensure the protections that have existed for decades offline finally apply to the online sphere.