The Online Safety Act has garnered significant attention in the UK since it came into force on Friday (July 25), but what does this mean for the internet?
In short, social media and other platforms are required to implement safety measures protecting children or face large fines.
This means that age verification tools are now being used on sites where they could access harmful content.
Here's all you need to know about the new rules and how they are being implemented.
Well done to everyone who campaigned to ensure age verification for pornography was in the Online Safety Act!
— Jess Asato MP (@Jess4Lowestoft) July 25, 2025
Today it comes into force and while no doubt there will be some who get around it, it means young kids in particular won’t be stumbling on violent and harmful porn. pic.twitter.com/LGtISAmReC
What is the Online Safety Act?
The Online Safety Act is a piece of legislation that received Royal Assent on October 26, 2023, with the aim of protecting children and adults online.
The Government website adds: "It puts a range of new duties on social media companies and search services, giving them legal duties to protect their users from illegal content and content harmful to children.
"The Act gives providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce risks their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear.
Why is age verification being used on the internet?
As of July 25, internet platforms have a legal duty to protect children from harmful content.
Companies within the scope of the act must introduce safety measures as part of this, which include age verification.
The Guardian reports: "This means all pornography sites must have in place rigorous age-checking procedures."
They continued: "Social media platforms and large search engines must also prevent children from accessing pornography and material that promotes or encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders."
Platforms will also have to suppress other material that could be potentially harmful to children.
This could include "the promotion of dangerous stunts, encouraging the use of harmful substances and enabling bullying".
How is age verification utilised by platforms?
Ofcom, the media regulator, has set out a number of ways websites can verify the age of users.
This can be done through credit card checks, photo ID matching and estimating age using a selfie.
Whatever format platforms choose, they must be "technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair," BBC News reports.
Which sites will require age verification?
Pornhub and a number of other major adult websites have confirmed they will introduce enhanced age checks, BBC News reports.
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Reddit has already introduced checks to stop people aged under 18 from looking at "certain mature content", while X and Grindr have committed to this as well.
Discord gives UK users a choice of face or ID scanning as a way to verify their age, after testing methods, and Bluesky says it will give UK users a range of different verification options, external.
BBC News adds: "Many more services which allow sexually explicit material may need to bring in measures to comply with the new rules."
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