Why UK Age-Verification Laws Are Re-Triggering Sexual Shame

You’re prepared for some solo time (you know what I mean). You lie back and load up some erotic content – only to be asked to prove you’re over 18.

You have two choices: stand up, find your wallet with your ID or credit card and supply it to a third party website, or take a selfie. It’s not exactly sexy, is it?

But since 25 July 2025, UK legislation has required social platforms to check users’ age before they access adult content.

According to the government website, the The Online Safety Act (OSA) was designed to “prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content”.

However, the age checks brought in under the Act are also impacting what fully grown adults can access on the internet – though they’re doing everything in their power to get around that.

After the Act came into effect, the number of people accessing VPNs immediately skyrocketed. Just three days later, VPN apps became the most-downloaded on Apple’s App Store in the UK and by December, VPN use had more than doubled since age verification was introduced.

For adults who aren’t using VPNs, though, the need to supply their ID to access porn sites is posing a problem.

“Since the law came into effect, we have undoubtedly seen adults, particularly those over aged 50, raise the most issues surrounding the need for age verification,” explains Anna Richards, founder and CEO of Frolic Me, an independent porn site for women.

Not only are older age groups less likely to be asked for ID when buying anything ‘adult’, but they might also be less in the know about how to get around age checks.

“While many Gen Z may circumvent these laws using VPNs, older, less tech-savvy adults are finding themselves self-censoring, anxious about leaving a digital footprint,” Richards continues.

“We are seeing them turn away from accessing perfectly legal erotic and educational content due to a fear of erosion of their privacy, anonymity, and therefore also their sexual freedom.”

Despite sexual content being hidden behind a paywall, adult content sites are required to verify age upon signing users onto their content.

On RedGIFs, a vertical, clipped porn site, it’s a similar issue, according to CEO Jimmy Tyldesley.

Only 44% of UK users who encounter the age verification prompt on his site follow through to provide age ID. This might sound like a small percentage, but in fact the UK has the highest completion rate of regions with similar age checks.

Tyldesly, who consulted on the OSA, believes this is pushing people away from porn sites that prioritise user safety “further into the depths of the internet”.

The numbers certainly seem to suggest so: in October of last year, Pornhub announced that UK visitors to its site had decreased by 77% since the Act was introduced.

While the visitor numbers to sites that don’t comply with the legislation are almost impossible to track, we can hazard a guess that the need for age ID hasn’t stopped people from accessing porn altogether.

In fact, porn viewers I spoke to (and Reddit threads I trawled) confirm people are turning to less regulated sites to avoid because of fears around their porn habits being tracked.

And not without reason: in December last year, hackers accessed more than 200 million search history and viewing habits records of paying PornHub Premium members.

Plus, earlier in 2026, Spanish data protection regulator AEPD fined Yoti, a digital ID site used by UK-based porn platforms, €950,000 for mishandling biometric data under EU GDPR law.

According to Evie Plumb, sex educator, therapist, and founder of sex education site Cliterally the Best, the added factor of age verification can inadvertently reinforce users’ shame because it can frame porn as something that should be hidden.

“My clients are trying to unlearn that porn is ‘bad’, and learn to have a healthy relationship with it if they have compulsive sexual behaviour,” Plumb explains.

“Often the root cause of that is shame, and there’s a shame cycle: the more shame you feel, the more likely you are to feel out of control with that relationship [with porn] and turn to it as a way to de-stress.

“Even if you’ve done all the work in the world, you might still feel shame when you watch porn. When you need to provide age verification it wakes you up to that immediately, and seems like you shouldn’t be watching it.

While men are more likely to watch – or at least admit to watching – porn than women, this sexual shame is likely to be far-reaching.

Unsurprisingly, sexual minorities are going to bear the brunt of the impact, explains Paulita Pappel, founder of amateur, creator-led porn site, Lustery, who thinks the Act is disproportionately impacting porn sites that work hard to prioritise representation.

“The more hurdles that are being put into the industry, the harder it gets for platforms and creators that are showing more diversity: representation of identities, bodies, sexual practices, and sexualities,” she says.

“These obligations make it way harder for them to comply because they don’t have the big legal teams that other companies have.”

These fears are already a reality: immediately after the OSA came into effect, female-focused porn platform Bellesa announced it was blocking UK viewers due the cost of implementing age checks.

Ultimately, this will mean “less visibility for the queer user to enjoy pornography that speaks to them and is made by them and for them,” Pappel says.

What’s even more worrying is that these restrictions are not being backed up by education – both for adults experiencing shame, and for the children the aim is so vehemently trying to protect.

Last year, the Children’s Commissioner confirmed that children as young as six stumble upon porn on social media by accident.

But at the same time, less than half of school children learn about pornography – including its content and its impact on sex and relationships – in sex education at school.

To add insult to injury, in some cases the Act requires age ID to access educational content online and on social media.

The UK government is currently consulting on platforms such as Meta’s Instagram and Facebook suppressing and, in some cases, altogether removing content related to women’s health. That is, posts that contain words like ‘vagina’, ‘tampon’, ‘menopause’ and ‘endometriosis’, to name a few.

So where are young people supposed to go for information about sex? According to content creator and sex educator Dee Whitnell, they’re now turning to AI as a way to fill the gaps in their knowledge.

Speaking on a panel at The Queer Health Gala, a first of its kind charity fundraiser earlier this month, Whitnell said: “Now social media is censoring sex educators’ content, kids are now going to AI because that is unregulated and uncensored.”

A year on, we must ask whether the Act has been a success, says Tyldesley. “Has it kept kids off porn sites? Has it been a success from an enforcement perspective?” he asks.

Fines totalling £5 million have been issued to eight companies who breach the Online Safety Act, according to an Ofcom spokesperson. But “some of the fines we’ve issued have been paid and some have not yet passed their deadlines to pay,” they told HuffPost.

“Where deadlines have passed and we have yet to receive payment, we have initiated work regarding the pursuit of that debt.”

Although a recent report published by the regulator suggests age checks are an effective deterrent to children accessing porn sites, that barely scratches the surface of what children could stumble across elsewhere.

“I would be interested to hear whether the laws have indeed proved effective enough in protecting children, over that of the compromise to adult privacy, sexual wellness, and personal freedoms,” says Richards.

As I heard founder of Make Love Not Porn, Cindy Gallop, say on a panel to launch her Yes Sex Please We’re British campaign: “It’s not about what you disable, it’s about what you enable.” The only way forward is through appropriate sex education for everyone.