Survey of age assurance circumvention by young people

In July 2025 the Online Safety Act's Child Safety Duties came into force, requiring online services to implement highly effective age assurance measures to prevent children from accessing harmful or age-inappropriate content. These duties were a major milestone in the government's approach to improving children's online safety. Following implementation, Ofcom reported that UK daily active users of virtual private networks (VPN) apps temporarily doubled to around 1.5 million. Emerging research suggests that this spi...