Ultimately it will be up to the tech companies to figure out how to implement the checks, as the onus is on social network providers to come up with their own solutions and comply. Ofcom's age verification report will now be considered by the government, with a decision due by the end of the year.
Explaining the regulatory approach, it was noted that what was learned in introducing age checks across the porn industry is that many countries previously prescribed a single way to do it and it did not work. Officials stated that services must put in the checks they need to while preserving privacy and protecting data.
Ofcom has also acknowledged that the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated, and some children would succeed in bypassing the age checks. A similar ban was introduced in Australia last year, but many children there have found ways to get round it.
Ofcom has set out its recommendations for the most effective ways to identify which of the UK's millions of social media users are aged over 16. The regulator said that photo and digital ID, banking checks, or facial age estimation can help prove someone is 16 or over.
Some of the tech companies, including Meta, have called for age verification to be applied at device level, so that someone under-age would be automatically blocked from installing social media apps via app stores. The regulator said it did not have a firm number for how many adults would need to prove they were not under age, but conceded that it would be a large number of accounts that social media companies would need to deal with.
"So what we've said all along is here are things that can work, they must preserve privacy, they must protect people's data, but it's on you to put in place what you think works for you,"the regulator stated.