- Government preparing legislation to force tech companies to make it impossible for anyone under the age of 18 to take, view or send nude images
- Apple and Google make progress but Government will prepare new laws to compel companies to deliver the strongest child safety laws in the world
- Growing sexual exploitation and abuse of children in the digital age means Government is taking action to protect children from the worst harms online
New legislation will be prepared by the Government to force tech companies to make it impossible for children to take, share or view naked pictures.
The new measures would put legal requirements on technology companies to install stronger safeguards on all their devices to help stop grooming, exploitation and abuse before children are exposed to harm.
The new legislation will be a world-first, putting the UK as the global leader on online safety and will mean the UK has the strongest online child safety laws in the world.
Since 8 June, the Government has been negotiating with Apple and Google to land world-first commitments to make it impossible for children to send, take or view nude images on their devices. There has been progress, marking a start in our efforts to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse, however, they do not meet the scale of the government’s ambition.
As a result, the government has today announced it will bring forward legislation to build in device-level protections for children. The Government is also exploring legislation that could require apps that children use to prevent them from accessing or sharing nudity, ensuring the whole ecosystem changes to protect children.
Given the complexity of this issue, it is vital that we take the time to get this legislation right, but the Government will introduce it as soon as possible, and it will tackle the means by which children are most often abused and groomed in the online world. If companies implement solutions themselves, we will reassess whether this is necessary.
The new laws will be based on the principles that:
It must be impossible for anyone under the age of 18 to take, view or send nude images. This means images must be blocked across all device features, including the camera and third-party apps.
Parents and carers should not have to take active steps to prevent children from consuming nude content. Nudity detection filters must be switched on by default.
The only way for any user to take, view or send nude images should be for an adult to verify their age through a robust age-assurance process.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said:
I know parents are worried about their children being safe when they have a phone. The truth is that too often, they aren’t.
In June we asked the biggest technology companies in the world to do one simple thing: make it impossible for a child to take, send or see a naked picture. They have moved. But not far enough or fast enough. So we will hold them to account and will not hesitate to change the law.
The protection will be built into the device and switched on by default. It will be for the companies to prove a user is an adult, not for a child to keep themselves out of harm’s way. No country has required that before. Britain will be the first, and we will have the strongest child safety laws in the world.
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, said in Parliament:
In no other walk of life would we tolerate this crisis harming our children, so why should we tolerate it online.
We will give tech companies the chance to lead, but not allow them to lag. The message we are sending to tech companies is clear – planning must now become implementation, and progress must translate into protections that make a real difference in children’s lives.
When it comes to children’s safety, we are not and never will be bystanders.
Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Satvir Kaur, said:
There is nothing more important than keeping our children safe, both off and online.
This government will not row back on its ambition to deliver this. That is why we are pressing ahead with legislation to ensure technology firms meet the scale of the challenge to protect children.
Last month, the Internet Watch Foundation reported that more child sexual extortion-related reports had been recorded in six months than in the whole of 2025.
The charity’s Report Remove service received just 19 sextortion reports in 2022. By 2025, that figure had risen to 394, highlighting the rapidly escalating threat facing young people online.
In 2024, the charity reported 91% of online child sexual abuse reports contained self-generated content from children themselves.
These measures come as the Government works to ensure every layer of the technology system plays its part to protect children from some of the worst harms online, introducing world-leading protections for children online. Earlier in the year, we announced measures to ban social media companies from providing their services to under-16s as well as restrictions on the riskiest features – such as livestreaming or stranger communications – for platforms like games.
Features that can keep users scrolling for longer – such as videos that automatically play one after another and feeds that continually serve up personalised content – will also be switched off by default for 16 and 17-year-olds, ensuring there is no cliff edge in protections as young people move into their later teenage years.
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