Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether age verification will be sought to watch content on YouTube without a registered account as part of the upcoming ban on social media for under 16s.

On 15 June, the government published a progress statement in response to the ‘Growing up in the Online World’ consultation. This set out that social media companies will be banned from providing their services to under 16s, we plan to follow the updated Australia definition which includes Youtube. We plan to lay regulations by the end of the year, which will set out our approach.

To enforce these age restrictions, services will need to use highly effective age assurance to determine who has access to services, to prevent risky or harmful services being offered to children. The Secretary of State has asked Ofcom to conduct a rapid assessment of what highly effective age assurance looks like for determining whether someone is over 16, and to publish this assessment by October.