The recent consultation on ‘growing up in an online world’ ran from 2 March 2026 to 26 May 2026. And while the government has already made clear its decision; some organisations have questioned its legitimacy given the output report came after the decision was announced. It is kind of weird – as the rush feels unnecessary given the proposed date for implementation is spring 2027.
Leaking snippets of the findings has not helped. We were told that 9/10 parents support the ban but that’s just based on the number of people who completed the consultation and it’s an extrapolated population truth (and some of the people that responded to the consultation skipped the question). The truths get further bashed if you look at the number of people who responded – 116.211 according to the headlines. Technically true but dig a bit deeper and the number is 83.071. That’s because 33,141 were campaign responses which have correctly been counted as one response.
There are plenty of other wonky things. There is seemingly no equalities impact assessment, and we question the ability to understand the impacts at the outset if Ofcom must now conduct a rapid study on what constitutes effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16. Do we have a workable solution? Who knows!
We note that in the case of this consultation, a change to the standard Consult (AI classification and summarisation) process was agreed. An interim run of the Consult process was completed around the mid-point of the consultation period, using the first c. 12,000 responses. Themes identified in this run informed the analysis of the responses in the full final data set. While we’re told additional checks and balances were made but we’d feel better is all the data was published in its raw form.
On this occasion a different type of outcome, such as more consultation, might have delivered more credibility. Either way, just more careful consideration of the fruits of the consultation, especially as this has basically just warmed-up the debate. Our gut feeling is that this is not yet over, and the decision may waiver. Even if it is, we might have just alienated future generations if they feel that their voices were not well represented.