UK Children Will Now Be Safer Online

 At last! As of today 25 July 2025, British children of all ages will be better protected from easy access to hardcore pornography. This is thanks to the UK government’s implementation of provisions regarding age verification for pornography in the Online Safety Act 2023. In practice it means sites and platforms that contain pornography will have to have a robust mechanism in place to check the age of potential users to prove they are 18 years or over. Otherwise, such companies will face enforcement action from the regulator, Ofcom. This may affect their profits and ability to operate.

Why was this legislation necessary?

Since the arrival of broadband or high-speed internet and then smartphones in the mid-noughties, children have been able to access an endless supply of violent, degrading and extreme pornography without any obstacle. Hardcore porn in adult sex shops is heavily regulated, but not online. It’s available for free on the open web.According to research by the UK government 10 years ago in its run up to previous attempts to introduce this legislation, it seems 20-30% of users are children. According to Ofcom (BBC website), there are currently 14 million users in the UK, that means 2.8-4.2 million children.Brain changes resulting from intense and sustained use of Internet pornography over months and years are cumulative. Bingeing on strong sexualised stimuli on a regular basis can drive addiction-related brain changes. Pornography sites, much like social media services, hook users with constant novelty and hyper stimulating sexual content. Internet pornography is not a safe product. For some it is a harmful, defective product by reason of its content.A huge array of research has been showing the risks this easy access has on malleable young minds. Here are a few examples:

Physical risks for users

Recent research from a team of urologists lead by Tim Jacobs shows that:“Of the participants who had started masturbating to porn at a very early age (<10 years), 58% (11/19) had some form of ED (P=.01), compared with 20.7% (61/295) in the group who started at 10-12 years old, 20.8% (173/831) in the group who started at 13-14 years old, 18.6% (97/521) in the group who started at 15-17 years old, and 24% (17/70) in the group who started at an age of 18 years or older…Conclusions: This prevalence of ED in young men is alarming high, and the results of this study suggest a significant association with problematic pornography consumption.” (Emphasis added)

Mental health risks for users

Recent Italian research  from 2024 shows that problematic pornography use was associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, stress, loneliness, and suicide ideation, as well as lower life satisfaction. Gender comparison analysis revealed significantly higher scores for problematic pornography use and loneliness among men, while women scored higher in stress, anxiety, and life satisfaction.

Impact on Relationships

Rape culture is everywhere in schools, colleges and society at large. Sixty percent of rape trials in Scotland involve sexual strangulation. The porn industry euphemistically calls it “airplay” or “breath play”. It is promoted as if it were a game, progressive and somehow liberating. It’s not safe! It’s not “sex positive”.Add to that fact that sexual strangulation is the second most common cause of stroke in women under 42 years of age. There is no way to gauge how much pressure a person can safely use on someone else’s neck. Strangulation, for even a few moments, can block the blood supply to and from the brain, starving it of vital oxygen and leading to physical harm. Porn culture promotes these dangerous behaviours.Problematic porn use means users cannot feel sexual satisfaction from or even interest in real life sex when, over time, they have trained their brains to need extreme arousal from porn.How lousy is that for young people? As a woman you try to look and be your best to attract a partner and guys aren’t interested in you or only want to act out some weird, violent sex act they’ve seen in porn videos performed by paid actresses or worse, in non-consensual videos uploaded by rogue partners? Or they have a sexual dysfunction as a result of too much porn.

Performance Anxiety?

It isn’t all performance anxiety either. That’s an excuse porn industry associates promote to blame women or anything other than porn for sexual dysfunctions. Is it any wonder more women are giving up on sex with men? Young men are confused about how to engage with women. It is difficult for young men and women to form loving relationships when their expectations are moulded by violent, degrading porn.Rates of suicidality amongst young men are already at an all time high. Porn culture is very much part of the blame.

Social media porn

Young men and women are being groomed by porn from an early age. TikTok and X are rife with it. Influencers and content creators on TikTok are encouraging young women to become porn performers on OnlyFans as soon as they turn 18. Popular sites like the Bop House where a group of alluring young women perform for money beguile others with the promise of making easy money for little in return. This apparently glamorous lifestyle in a Playboy-style mansion belies the truth of the mental distress caused to many. Vanilla porn is boring. Soon fans want more shocking material and acts if the girls are to keep earning. Young women get used to easy money and find it hard to function in normal life.Boys too are being groomed and softened up by porn over months and years ready to be influenced by the likes of Andrew Tate. His violence and misogyny towards the women is characteristic of a sadistic psychopath.We need young men and women who will grow up to become loving, kind trustworthy partners with whom they can feel safe and loved. Men and women all want this.

Porn industry’s earnings

Sex is nature’s number one driver from puberty onwards.  When finding sex in real life is a challenge or is forbidden because a user is underage, porn looks like a good substitute. It may seem to scratch an itch, but in fact it makes the longing and “itch” worse. The porn industry takes advantage of that longing by pushing porn towards users.According to research in 2019 analysing 22,000 porn companies, 93% were found to have “leaked” private information to third parties. This is the business model of the porn industry. It knows everything about users' behaviour, age and preferences, more often than they know, about themselves. It sells that information to others for the purposes of advertising. Pornhub gets 4.2 billion ad impressions a day. They make a fraction of a cent on every one ad impression, that adds up to a lot of money. It’s why they push so much stimulating and increasingly shocking material to users to keep them watching and hooked.Here is a useful debate about this new legislation on the BBC website.

TRF speaks out

Our CEO Mary Sharpe was invited on to BBC Radio Scotland on Thursday 24^th July and Friday 25^th July to speak about the possible impact of the new UK age verification legislation for porn sites and social media.The Thursday slot was on “Mornings with Stephen Jardine”. Mary spoke about how this initiative should provide a valuable support to parents and children who wish to be protected from easy access to violent, hardcore porn online. It isn’t a “silver bullet” as many determined children, especially older ones, will be able to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to get round blocks. That’s why widespread education about porn’s effects on the brain is important. Parents, teachers, professionals and users themselves need to know how bingeing on porn affects their brain and behaviour over time. Supporting young people to quit porn will help them develop the skills they need to become successful adults.

Health issues

Mary talked about the mental health and physical health issues arising from problematic porn use. For instance, she referred to an Italian study that found problematic porn users in adolescents resulted in higher rates of depression, social anxiety, loneliness, suicide ideation, and lower life satisfaction, particularly among men.She also mentioned a urology study found that 58% of young men who started using porn before the age of 10 had developed some form of sexual dysfunction a few years later. This compared to 24% who developed it after starting using porn at 18 or older. Mary also pointed to free materials for schools, parents and professionals that are available on the reward foundation website.Other speakers included Michael Conroy of Men at Work. Michael spoke eloquently of the fears of the young men he deals with around the widespread access to porn. “Sir, do I really need to choke women?” was one such comment he had from a young man. There was some good debate too from other contributors to the phone-in who endorsed our work. You can hear the full one-hour discussion here.

Lunchtime Live

Friday 25^th July, was D-Day- when the legislation takes effect. Hayley Millar interviewed Mary on the Lunchtime Live programme on BBC Radio Scotland. This time Mary talked about the rates of sexual strangulation where 60% of rape trials in Scotland now include an element of it, among other concerns.Michael Conroy was again playing tag team in this episode. He spoke convincing of the need for this legislation based on his experience of working with young men today.

The Online Safety Act also does other good things

The Online Safety Act does a lot more than help protect children from pornography. A wide-ranging explanation is available from the Government’s own Online Safety Act: Explainer.

Enjoy the summer having more fun in real life!