A new report from Internet Matters, titled The Online Safety Act: Are Children Safer Online?, reveals that children across the United Kingdom are circumventing online age verification with surprising creativity. Among the 1,270 children aged 9 to 16 surveyed, one-third admitted to bypassing age checks in the past two months. Methods range from entering fake birthdates to using borrowed IDs, but the most striking tactic involves drawing moustaches on their faces to trick facial recognition software.
One mother told researchers she caught her 12-year-old son using an eyebrow pencil to draw a moustache. The platform's facial age estimation tool verified him as 15. “It worked,” she said. This anecdote underscores a broader trend: 46% of children believe age checks are easy to bypass, while only 17% find them difficult.
Creative Bypass Methods and Parental Complicity
Children described a range of infiltration techniques, including submitting videos of other people's faces and using video game characters to fool facial recognition tools. An 11-year-old girl explained, “I've seen clips of people online where they'll get clips of video game characters like turning their head and use it for age verification.” Older children are more confident: 52% of those aged 13 and over say age verification is easy to beat, compared with 41% of those aged 12 and under.
The most common reasons for bypassing checks are to access social media platforms (34%), join online games or gaming communities (30%), and use messaging apps (29%). Notably, 26% of parents have allowed their child to bypass age checks, with 17% actively helping. One mother of a 13-year-old said, “I have helped my son get around them. It was to play a game, and I knew the game, and I was happy and confident that I was fine with him playing it.”
Is the Online Safety Act Delivering?
The UK's Online Safety Act came into force in July 2025, requiring platforms to implement age-appropriate safety measures. There are some positive signs: 68% of parents and children report noticing new safety features, such as improved reporting tools, content warnings, and restrictions on livestreaming. However, nearly half of children (49%) said they had experienced harm online in the past month, including violent content (12%), content promoting unrealistic body types (11%), and racist, homophobic, or sexist content (10%)—all prohibited under the Act's Children's Safety Codes.
Children in focus groups also described seeing videos of the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk on social media. A 14-year-old girl recounted, “I saw it on Snapchat. I broke down into tears and then told my mum immediately.”
The report recommends that children's safety be built into platforms from the outset, that access be determined by risk level, and that measures be tailored to developmental stages rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. It also stresses the role of parents, calling for guidance on parental controls and clear explanations of how algorithms influence what children see online.
This UK-focused study has broader implications for Europe, where similar age verification challenges are emerging. The European Union is developing its own approach, including a free age verification app slated for 2026, while debates over the digital euro and online safety continue. As platforms and regulators grapple with these issues, the ingenuity of children—and the complicity of some parents—highlights the difficulty of enforcing age restrictions in a digital age.
