The online services riskiest to children, whether social media, search engines or gaming, must use highly effective age assurance to identify which users are children, says the regulator Ofcom. This means, it says, the services can protect children from harmful material, while preserving adults’ rights to access legal content. That may involve preventing children from accessing the site or app, or only some parts or kinds of content. If services have minimum age requirements but are not using strong age checks, they must assume younger children are on their service and ensure they have an age-appropriate experience.
Providers of services likely to be accessed by UK children have until July 24 to finalise and record their assessment of the risk their service poses to children, which Ofcom may request. Harmful content under the Online Safety Act includes relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography. Online services must also act to protect children from misogynistic, violent, hateful or abusive material, online bullying and ‘dangerous challenges’.
Ofcom Chief Executive Dame Melanie Dawes said: “These changes are a reset for children online. They will mean safer social media feeds with less harmful and dangerous content, protections from being contacted by strangers and effective age checks on adult content. Ofcom has been tasked with bringing about a safer generation of children online, and if companies fail to act they will face enforcement.”
For advice to parents on what Ofcom measures mean in practice, tips on keeping children safe online and where to get further support – visit ofcom.org.uk/parents.
Comment
Campbell Cowie, Head of Policy at authentication product firm iProov, welcomed the guidance from Ofcom on age assurance as ‘a vital step towards creating safer online spaces for our most vulnerable users’. “This framework paves the way for ensuring children are protected from harmful content and are guided towards age-appropriate online experiences.
“While ‘age assurance’ can be viewed as a broad term, robust age verification – and by that we mean the definitive matching of government-issued IDs with biometric data – offers the only accurate path to proving a user’s age and ensuring access to suitable content. The use of strong liveness is essential and strengthens defences to ensure that the user is the right user, a real user, and thwarts any spoofing attempts to create an unbreachable digital guardian for our children and gatekeeper to age-appropriate activity and content.
“Ofcom’s commitment to ‘highly effective’ measures aligns with our conviction that only certainty, powered by verification and secured by liveness, can truly shield young people in the online realm and direct them to experiences designed for their age. This isn’t just about checking a box; it’s about building a secure space where children can safely participate in digital ecosystems within age-relevant boundaries and without undue risk.”
