Privacy is not a workaround. Minister confirms VPNs are out of scope. #SocialMediaBan

Today the government said there was little to show VPNs were being used by many children to get around age checks. The Minister for AI and Online Safety, Kanishka Narayan confirmed that “at this stage” the government would not be making changes to VPN policy, citing findings from commissioned research.

We welcome this news, and that government has listened to expert voices opposing any VPN restrictions as previously had been suggested among contentious proposals (8.1).  Together with 20 organisations, we had written to the Minister and made clear that children need and use the privacy protections that VPNs offer too. As we wrote together with Child Rights International Network in May earlier this year, VPNs had a reputational issue, perceived as being about Villains, Predators, Nastiness? when they need to be better understood as Visibility, Privately Negotiated.

To make age checks online enforceable, many states are seeking routes to close off the ways children use to evade them. But VPN bans aren’t primarily used for those reasons, even by children.

Most children who use a VPN feel safer for doing so, and value their privacy highly. Eight in 10 VPN users (81%) say it makes them feel safer online. Privacy matters to 86% of all children, rising to 90% among lifetime VPN users and falling to 84% among non-VPN users.

Those figures are among the findings of a March 2026 YouGov poll of 2,167 GB children aged 11–17, for Ofcom, that explored the extent to which children use VPNs, including use for certain activities, and how frequently they use a VPN. Of the respondents, 3.2% had used a VPN to access age-inappropriate content in the last 6 months. Among children who accessed content meant for older people, only 11% used a VPN— versus 54% who simply said they were older than they are, 22% who had an adult account, and 17% who used someone else’s device or account. VPN use is more extensive in “watched sports/TV/movies not available in the UK” (43% of VPN users vs 15% of all children) and gaming content (23% vs 9%). But the most-used-for purpose remains privacy. 46% of VPN users have taken steps to hide identity/location and 56% to keep personal information private, which is 21% and 29% of all children asked. Under a third of those children asked, had ever used a VPN at all.

The more recent survey for DSIT carried out by BMG, polling with 2,299 UK children, found similarly 26% lifetime use and 22% had ever used a VPN in the last three months. Ofcom asked, for each activity a child undertook, which method they used to do it, basing the answer on children who did that activity; DSIT asks VPN users to select their reasons, basing the answer on all lifetime VPN users. Ofcom found that 17% of children who accessed age-restricted features did so using a VPN, while DSIT finds that 22% of VPN users cite gaining age-restricted access as a reason, from which it derives its headline figure of 7% of all children use a VPN for this reason.

These are broadly in line with other recent research, including Childnet’s November 2025 figure of 21% for the wider 8–17 age range. And a fourth survey by Internet Matters in December.

This missing analysis on VPNs has come late in the day after the policy proposals had been put forward, and despite awareness of the risks to privacy from age checks raised by some policy makers, such as Baroness Kidron, in remarks nearly a year ago in the House of Lords. That understanding has not yet cut through to the majority.

Banning VPNs is characteristically the tool of authoritarian states pursuing censorship and surveillance and require anonymity for the protection of those who use them; from the every day as a safeguard of privacy to whistleblowers, journalists, activists and those seeking safety including for example, from domestic violence.

We hope there is no nuance left here to come back, and that “at this stage” does not mean the subject resurfaces in another form later. In 2025, the Children’s Commissioner for England said she wanted to see them age gated. That would mean the end of anonymous use of VPNs and defeat part of their privacy preserving purposes. Many policymakers making similar statements reveal a limited understanding of the technology and their applications.

The question remains. If the evidence from 4 separate surveys show an overwhelmingly clear case against VPN restrictions, why did the absurd question of banning or age-gating them, ever get so far in political and media debate in the the first place?

A half compromise appears reached on the announcement of curfew hours that can be switched off. A Cinderella Law to block gamers from playing in certain hours in Korea, was scrapped after a decade after being found not only unworkable, but unpopular.

As we see from the poor evidence and understanding across other aspects of the #SocialMediaBan debate and technology more generally, pixie dust and magical thinking cannot deliver the practical online safety that parents and policymakers really want. Real solutions to social problems cannot be engineered through such coercive, technology-based rules.

This learning about VPNs policy should be a positive lesson to extend across more of the subject and we will be talking more about when it comes to age-gating, very soon.