The Online Safety Bill has become law, after 5 years in the making. It seeks to make online and social media companies responsible for keeping children and young people safe online, by being required to remove any content that is harmful or illegal. One aspect of this is to put age checking measures in place and to enforce age limits.
The NSPCCC is on record as saying:
“After years of campaigning, we’ve done it! We can finally say that the Online Safety Bill has been passed by parliament and will soon be made a law.
This means that the internet will be safer for children and young people. Websites and apps must now be built with children’s safety in mind, and tech companies will have to legally protect them from harm.”
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/support-us/campaigns/end-child-abuse-online/
In a related story, Meta is being criticised for continuing with its plan to offer end-to-end encryption for Facebook messages later this year, which is seen by some as key to privacy, whilst to others it undermines the protections that the online safety bill seeks to put in place.