UK Age Verification Rumbles (Again)

Webmaster Discussion
#1

So UK age verification is back in the news. BBFC commissioned a study and the results are out.

XBiz’s take: https://www.xbiz.com/news/249980/u-k-age-verification-report-prompts-puzzled-reactions

The overview: https://www.revealingreality.co.uk/2020/01/31/what-do-i-do-how-children-use-porn-to-explore-intimacy/

And the detailed report: https://www.revealingreality.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/BBFC-Young-people-and-pornography-Final-report-2401.pdf

It’s actually a decent read. Some of their methodology was a bit questionable, but even with that the findings actually point out the deficiencies in the proposed system (besides the fact that in a few years it will be impossible to enforce). For example…

Many respondents described their first viewing of pornography as having occurred “accidentally” via a number of routes. These included:

  • [I]Google searches where many described unwittingly searching terms such as ‘sex’ or ‘porn’ without understanding what these words meant.[/I]
  • [I]Receiving links to videos on pornographic sites from friends without knowing what the content would include[/I]
  • [I]Adverts or pop-ups on film streaming, sport streaming or gaming websites, which host content that is often shared illegally[/I]
  • [I]Being shown videos on a friend’s phone. Often this happened when they started secondary school, aged 11 or 12 years old[/I]
[I]"The devices most children were using at the time varied, although it tended to be on a family desktop or laptop computer, or on a personal tablet or phone."[/I]

This is important because the proposed age check strategies wouldn’t stop ANY of those items. Google won’t be required to have age verification. Their friends can still send links to porn on social media (e.g. Twitter). Illegal streaming sites won’t comply with the law and trying to track them is a pointless game of whack-a-mole. And there’s still plenty of porn available to see on their friend’s phone.

So the bottom line is that this report could be a huge help for our industry to fight back saying the age verification system won’t stop anything other than free speech.

Adding to that… When you look at where teens go when they intentionally want to see porn the overall numbers are:

  • 53% – Image or video search engine
  • 44% – Social media sites
  • 43% – Dedicated pornography websites
And when looking at the youngest kids (11-13 y.o.) those numbers are:
  • 50% – Image or video search engine
  • 42% – Social media sites
  • 33% – Dedicated pornography websites
Yet the UK's proposed age verification only covered dedicated porn sites – which is the smallest "offender" (especially for really young kids).

All in all it’s an interesting read and the bottom line is that it doesn’t strongly support age verification as defined by the most recent attempt. The kids themselves thought they should be allowed to see porn around 14 or 15. And they saw some negative impacts of age verification as well (especially for LGBT kids).

#2

Once again, it seems to me that most of this comes down to parents not implementing the methods they should be implementing to stop their kids from viewing such content on their phones.

Search engines need to be doing a better job, that goes without saying. But there are methods parents could be using to prevent this, they just choose not to. There are several child-friendly search engines available and parents have the option of creating user accounts on their devices to limit access to only vetted content.

Social media is a major problem with this kind of exposure to unwanted content, and other risks too, but again that’s down to parents allowing their kids to access these websites on their devices. If kids don’t have Twitter or FB accounts (and I would argue that they shouldn’t until the age of 16, mostly because the Facebook drama machine is becoming a major obstacle to learning) then there’s no reason for them to be looking at those sites and the content being shared on them.

However, it also needs to be pointed out that back in the early '90s I was looking through my best friend’s porn magazines, so this notion that all of this is somehow new or dangerous is a little far-fetched. I think all my friends back then had at least one porn magazine they’d pinched from a brother or “borrowed” from the back of dad’s wardrobe, but we’re supposed to believe that the big bad internet has birthed this. It might be more common and easier to access, but none of this is going to stop the rebellious kid with no blocks on their phone from showing things to their friends.

I don’t think any of this is going to be solved by the measures proposed. The only way this problem (and it is a problem) can be minimized is by demanding that parents take responsibility for their own kids and learn to tell them NO, teach parents to implement blocks and restrictions, give them the free tools to be able to do that, and (perhaps most importantly) make them learn how to talk to their kids about these things in a sane and rational way rather than wimping out and expecting society to change for them.