Snap to age-verify all UK users by end of summer
Key Points
- Snap will roll out highly effective age-checks for all UK users in summer 2026, the foundation of a wider child safety package agreed with Ofcom.
- Snap is the only one of six major platforms to adopt every grooming prevention measure in Ofcom's Illegal Harms Codes.
- Adult strangers will be blocked from contacting children by default, and friend-expansion prompts will no longer target child accounts.
- Meta, Roblox, TikTok and YouTube made narrower commitments, with TikTok and YouTube refusing to change their feeds.
- 84% of UK children aged 8 to 12 still use one of the top five platforms despite minimum ages of 13.
Snap will introduce highly effective age-checks for all UK users this summer, Ofcom confirmed on Thursday (21 May).
The rollout underpins a wider child safety package agreed with the regulator. Snap is the only one of six major platforms to adopt every grooming prevention measure in Ofcom’s Illegal Harms Codes.
The result is that children using Snap in the UK will have stronger safeguards against adult predators than Snap users in any other country.
Adult strangers will be blocked from contacting children by default. Children will also no longer be prompted to expand their friendship groups to people they do not know.
The age-check rollout is the mechanism that makes those defaults enforceable, since Snap must reliably identify under-18s before applying child-specific settings to them.
The commitments follow Ofcom’s demand to tech firms in March to introduce failsafe protections against grooming. Snap has gone beyond its Online Safety Act duties, agreeing to notify Ofcom whenever it updates its risk assessments before making significant changes to services used by children.
That early-warning arrangement also covers Facebook, Instagram, Roblox and YouTube.
In one instance highlighted by Ofcom’s research, nearly three-quarters (73%) of 11 to 17-year-olds encountered harmful content in a four-week period, and 35% of those recalled exposure while scrolling their feed.
The regulator’s research also found that 84% of children aged 8 to 12 still use one of YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat despite all five setting a minimum age of 13.
Other platforms have committed less far
Meta has committed to hiding teens’ connection lists on Instagram by default and will roll out AI tools to detect likely sexualised conversations between adults and teens in Instagram direct messages.
Roblox will give parents the ability to switch off direct chat services entirely for under-16s.
TikTok and YouTube did not commit to significant changes to the content served to children, with both maintaining their feeds are already safe enough.
Ofcom has written to the Secretary of State to advise that current online safety laws do not explicitly require services to keep underage children off platforms using robust age checks.
The regulator is also exploring new inspection powers under the Online Safety Act, which would allow independent audits and remote inspection notices to observe content detection, moderation systems, algorithms and age-checks in real time.
“These changes have the potential to make children’s lives safer online,” said Melanie Dawes, Chief Executive at Ofcom. “We are determined to force through further changes, using the full extent of our powers and influence.”
