Poll: Brits strongly support porn age-verification checks

Eight in ten Britons believe pornography websites should ensure all users are over the age of 18, new polling has revealed.

Of the 1148 adults surveyed by PeoplePolling for GB News, 78 per cent backed the use of age-verification checks to prevent children from gaining access to online pornography. Only 5 per cent disagreed with the proposal.

Lord Bethell is seeking to amend the Government’s Online Safety Bill in order to force pornography websites to start verifying the age of users within six months of the legislation becoming law.

Political spectrum

The majority of Conservative voters (84 per cent), Labour voters (80 per cent), and Liberal Democrat voters (80 per cent) agreed that more should be done to protect children from online pornography.

The survey also demonstrated strong support among young adults for pornography websites to have age verification systems, with nearly six in ten (59 per cent) 18 to 24-year-olds in favour of the idea.

Speaking to GB News, politics Professor Matthew Goodwin said the survey demonstrated widespread public support for Lord Bethell’s amendment.

I’ve never seen numbers like this in a poll really before, we’ve got about 78 per cent of the country expressing support for having these checks for children ensuring they can’t access pornography online. Professor Matthew Goodwin

Loopholes

Age verification checks were approved under the Digital Economy Act 2017, but plans to implement them were abandoned in October 2019.

Lord Bethell argues that the current definition of age verification in the Online Safety Bill is not strong enough, and the legislation’s measures could create loopholes for websites to claim it would be too difficult to enforce checks.