Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following their decision to mandate on-device nudity safeguards, what consideration they have given to requiring the use of the same technology to deploy universal screen time limits on every device used by a child.

The Prime Minister announced on 8 June that the UK will be the first country in the world where it will be impossible for any child in the UK to take share or view nude images. We will work with tech companies for three months to ensure that comprehensive nudity detection is implemented at operating system level, with adults able to switch it off by proving they are over-18 through age assurance. If industry does not meet our high expectations, then we will legislate.

The primary aim of this intervention is to disrupt grooming and sextortion pathways, to prevent exploitation of children as early as possible; and as an additional safety intervention to ensure that children cannot access pornographic material.

It is important that each user of a smartphone uses the device with their own operating system account. Such an account should be set up with nudity detection default-on, and only deactivated through age assurance to prove the user is over-18. If a device is shared, parents/carers should make sure that default-on nudity detection protections are not deactivated if the device is likely to be used by a child. Parents/carers should also be mindful if their phone – which may have nudity detection deactivated – is picked up by a child. Risks such as this, amongst others, will rightly form part of the government's three-month engagement with tech companies to work through technical solutions to meet the government's objective.

While this intervention is specifically bounded to nudity detection which can be deactivated through age assurance to prove the user is over-18, the government will consider the benefits and risks of wider potential use cases for these technological innovations.

Device-level age assurance could have further applicability to other online age restrictions. The Prime Minister announced restrictions on social media services for under-16s, on 15 June - Social media to be banned for under-16s in landmark government move to give kids their childhood back - GOV.UK.

The government committed to learn lessons from Australia’s experience by introducing more highly effective age assurance (HEAA) measures to support compliance, making it far harder for children to bypass safeguards; and that Ofcom will conduct a rapid study on what is effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16.

Device-level age assurance can be more effective, convenient and privacy preserving for the user – including making it harder for users to circumvent restrictions via VPNs as can be done with platform level age checks. The government will continue to actively consider the extent to which device-level age assurance could be used to restrict access to age-gated services, such as social media and VPN services. The government’s announcement on 15 June 2026 did not include any explicit proposal to restrict or ban VPNs for under-16s, or universal screen time proposals.

We welcome measures that tech companies have already brought forward in this area – such as nudity detection already implemented by both Apple and Google. Apple introduced device-level age assurance in its iOS26.4 operating system update in March 2026, and expanded Communication Safety features to intervene when gore or violent content is detected on child accounts. These are constructive and welcome developments, which will protect children from other types of harmful content as well as nudity. Key to the targeting of such interventions is the differentiation of a child user of a device, which can be achieved through device-level age assurance to activate other safety interventions. The government will continue to consider options to go further in this respect.

Regarding the use, and restricted use, of devices while children are at school, Department for Education guidance (updated February 2026) is explicit that all schools should be mobile phone free environments by default, and that schools prohibit the use of mobile phones throughout the school day. Furthermore, the government continually horizon scans to appraise new technological innovations which may enable better safeguarding of children online, and device usage in school. The government engages with industry regularly to stay abreast of promising products which could be applied to better safeguarding children.