Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator, on October 29 named four age-check methods it considers “highly effective” at proving a user is 16 or older. Ministers asked for the assessment to inform the regulations for their ban on under-16s using social media.
The four are photo ID matching, bank-based checks, digital ID services and facial age estimation, which The Register reports must be paired with a second check. Credit card, mobile operator and email checks, which Ofcom says work for confirming someone is 18 but not 16, did not make the list. A passport or driving licence is one route; the bank, digital ID and face checks are the others.
The practical effect falls on many adults, not only children, because a platform cannot know who is under 16 without checking. The Register reports that some adults may be spared where a platform can infer their age from past activity.
Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, said the ban “can work if social media firms do highly effective age checks properly.” According to The Register’s report of the assessment, Ofcom concedes that “the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated.”
Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties group, answered the same day. Its director, Silkie Carlo, called the plan “a national ID system by the back door” and “an Orwellian assault on free speech and privacy,” and called instead for “parental controls that genuinely protect children.”
The ban rests on a new section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023, inserted by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. Ministers intend to lay the regulations before the end of this year, and the ban is expected to start around spring 2027. The assessment was requested in June by the Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall.
Dawes is a career civil servant whom the Ofcom board appointed chief executive in February 2020.
Canada is on the same road. The Safe Social Media Act, Bill C-34, which would set a similar limit for children 16 and under, is at second reading in the House of Commons.
