The British government has suggested it may ban VPN services as it seeks to enforce its upcoming social media ban for children under 16.
The censorious left-wing UK government said that it will announce plans for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) next month amid growing questions about how it intends to ensure that children do not subvert the upcoming social media prohibition.
Critics have warned that the social media ban for under-16s will require the state to implement a digital ID system to verify internet users’ ages, potentially impacting the privacy of all citizens, including law-abiding adults.
Others have also questioned what the government intends to do about children who simply use VPNs to mask their IP addresses and access the internet from countries that don’t prohibit children from using social media sites.
While VPNs were once mostly used by people in authoritarian countries like Communist China, Islamist Iran, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia to unblock vast swathes of the internet, they have grown in popularity in Western countries in recent years amid rising state censorship.
Indeed, according to data collected by the IT Asset Management Group, Google searches for “VPN” rose by 165 per cent after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer formally announced plans to ban social media for those under 16 on Monday, City AM reported.
Technology Minister Liz Kendall told the BBC on Tuesday morning that the government will “make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions.”
When confronted on LBC with the relatively simple workaround to the government’s social media ban, a clearly exasperated Kendall said, “You’re just going to have to bear with me on this,” and said that a response will come next month.
Meanwhile, Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister said the government may also consider a “age-gate” for VPN use, which he said would be “really welcome”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who has gained large young audiences on social media platforms like TikTok, has said he would be “surprised” if teenagers were unable to get around the ban.
Mr Farage also noted the hypocrisy of the Labour government’s plans to introduce social media curfews for 16 and 17-year-olds, while still maintaining that they are old enough to vote.
The left-wing Labour Party, which has struggled to connect with voters on social media, has long suggested that the government should restrict VPN usage.
Indeed, back in 2022, then Labour frontbencher Sarah Champion called for a crackdown on VPNs over concerns that children were using them to get around the previous Online Safety Act.
Last year, then Technology Secretary Peter Kyle suggested that companies which promote the use of VPNs to skirt age verification could face fines from the government, saying: “If a company directly delivers harmful content into the feeds of children, it is the arrival into their feeds which is the offence. If they direct children via other means to that content, it has the same outcome.”
Should Britain ban or restrict VPNs, it would join the likes of China, Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Myanmar, and Pakistan.