UK porn traffic down since beginning of age checks but VPN use up, says Ofcom

Traffic to pornography websites in the UK has fallen in the wake of age checks being introduced this year while use of specialist software to dodge viewing restrictions has increased, according to the communications watchdog.Ofcom said the enforcement of age vetting on 25 July led to an immediate fall in visits to popular online porn publishers, including the most visited provider in the UK, Pornhub.The regulator said visitor numbers to Pornhub in August were 9.8 million, a decline of 1.5 million compared with the same period in 2024. Ofcom said in its annual Online Nation report that, overall, visitor numbers to the 10 most-visited pornography services in the UK have now settled at a “lower level” than before 25 July.Figures given to the Guardian by Similarweb, the US data firm that provided the Ofcom figures, shows that the slump in pornography viewing appears to have continued beyond August. The number of unique visitors to Pornhub was 7.2 million last month, a decline of 36% since August 2024. Visits to Xvideos and Chaturbate – the next two biggest sites – fell by 27% and 18% respectively over the same period.Ofcom added that use of virtual private networks, software that can circumvent viewing restrictions by routing the visit via another country, had surged after 25 July. It said VPN usage more than doubled in the wake of age checking being introduced, rising from 650,000 users to a peak of more than 1.4 million in mid-August. The VPN number now stands at 900,000.“Since August VPN usage has continued to steadily decline,” said Ofcom. “The level of daily VPN use is much lower than user numbers for porn services.”Pornhub, owned by a Canadian private equity firm, said the loss of user numbers was “not a surprise” and was consistent with other jurisdictions that have introduced stringent age checks. It has claimed the changes have driven porn users to sites that are not compliant with the OSA.Elsewhere in the report, the regulator found that about 60% of 11- to 17-year-olds had taken action after encountering harmful content, including reporting it to the relevant platform and blocking the person who posted the content. Ofcom said it had surveyed the teenagers before new rules had come into place requiring platforms to prevent children from accessing harmful content such as suicide and self-harm material – as well as pornography. The new rules were introduced under the Online Safety Act, which is overseen by Ofcom.The most common form of encounter with harmful content was scrolling through a feed, indicating that social media algorithms were serving inappropriate material to children. The second-most common was viewing it in a group chat while looking at someone’s comments.Meanwhile, the government announced it would review the criminal law relating to pornography “to consider whether it is fit for purpose in the ever-developing online world”. “The review will look into the effectiveness of the existing law in relation to criminalising, among other things, harmful depictions of incest and any forms of pornography which encourage child sexual abuse,” Alison Levitt, a justice minister, told the House of Lords.Campaigners for better regulation of online pornography on Tuesday urged the government to outlaw “barely legal” material, including content that has incest scenes or encourages child sexual abuse by casting young-looking adults dressed as children.The Conservative peer Gabby Bertin, the author of a review into regulating online pornography, and Beeban Kidron, a cross-bench peer and campaigner for child online safety, laid down a series of amendments to the government’s crime and policing bill, aimed at removing loopholes that allow pornography sites to continue hosting violent and harmful material.Aiming to ban pornography performed by adults mimicking children, sometimes filmed in children’s bedrooms surrounded by dolls, the peers propose extending the offence of making an indecent image of a child to include pornographic material depicting a child, where the role is played by an adult performer. This material would historically have been illegal to broadcast offline under British Board of Film Classification regulations, but is permitted online.The campaigners also propose stricter control of incest pornography. “Research show incest-themed content is among the most recommended to new users on popular platforms – another stark example of algorithms encouraging harmful content,” Lady Bertin said. The amendments would ensure that “protections we have enforced for decades offline apply in the digital age”, clarifying that “material which is too harmful to sell in a shop should not be freely available on a smartphone”.The campaigners also want the legislation to add further controls on “nudification” technology, and suggest making it an offence to possess or obtain software designed to create nude images of another person without consent. They proposed the creation of a new body, separate to Ofcom but which would work alongside it, responsible for conducting spot checks on pornography platforms and able to act on reports of illegal content.No details were given about the timing of the government’s review.