Sir Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall on Thursday told social media companies to adopt the same tough age verification checks used by adult sites such as OnlyFans as ministers come under growing pressure to tackle online harms.
The demand from the prime minister and the tech secretary came in a Downing Street meeting with UK executives from Meta, Google, TikTok, Snap and X on Thursday.
Starmer told the companies that “things can’t go on like this” and warned they were “putting our children at risk”, in remarks at the start of the meeting.
Kendall pointed to porn sites such as OnlyFans as an example of how age checks could be used robustly and urged the social media industry to follow their example, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting.
The Online Safety Act, which media regulator Ofcom began enforcing last year, already requires mainstream social media groups to adopt “highly effective” age checks so children are not exposed to harmful material on their apps.
At present the government is consulting on whether to introduce an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, following proposals by the House of Lords.
Moving to an OnlyFans-style verification system could mean requiring users to submit credit card details or identity documents such as passports to ensure unrestricted access to some of the UK’s most popular apps.
It is unclear if this would require new powers or involve Ofcom enforcing the OSA’s existing guidelines more strictly.
Many tech platforms rely on AI-based age estimation technologies, for instance by looking at the kinds of content a user watches or their friendship group, to assess their age. Others use AI to estimate a person’s age by uploading a photograph.
But Starmer and Kendall on Thursday suggested tech companies needed to go further to ensure children could not evade these filters, said four people briefed on the meeting.
Some porn sites including Pornhub have shut down in the UK, saying the OSA was unworkable.
Government figures are concerned about the practicalities of a full ban on children’s use of social media. Labour MPs this week voted down a House of Lords amendment that would have imposed one. Instead they are consulting on the best way to protect children online.
Starmer has previously voiced concern about “addictive scrolling mechanisms” and on Thursday urged companies to block children from consuming endless amounts of social media content.
While some platforms do this, the prime minister in the meeting urged others to imitate them, having concluded that algorithms encouraging children to stay for longer are addictive.
In public remarks at the start of the meeting, Starmer said: “Things can’t go on like this, they must change because right now social media is putting our children at risk. In a world in which children are protected, even if that means access is restricted, that is preferable to a world where harm is the price of participation.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Thomas