The United Kingdom requires the hard sites to verify that users are really more than 18 years old. And he wants to prevent those born since 2009 from buying cigarettes, even once he reached the age of majority. (Or almost) the controversies are inevitable
Forget the pop-up with the writing “Are you adults? Yes/no” and the accomplice smile of who mind. From today, in the UK, to access porn sites you need A digital driving license of desires: Either you show an identity document, or let yourself scan your face, like when the iPhone unlocks. The United Kingdom has decided that it is enough to improvise.
The measure is not a simple retouching to online navigation, but a revolution of the relationship between public and private, between what you look at and what you have to prove to look at it. From midnight on 25 July 2025, those who are not completed 18 will no longer be able to reach the forbidden content with a click. It is the beginning of one New digital seasonwhere the lightness of navigation leaves room for tight checks, similar to those of the supermarket when they ask for the identity card for a bottle of wine. Pornography becomes a supervised passage, no longer a territory accessible with a lie on a date of birth.
“It is no longer enough to self -row adults. Now the system wants evidence,” explained Oliver Griffiths of Ofcom, which in fact has become the “inspector” of British digital morality. With fines that can reach up to 10% of the global turnover of the web giants, the message is clear: Whoever does not adapt, closes.
Privacy or surveillance?
Obviously the thought immediately runs to theBig Brother digital eye. The Face -Scan to see a hard video has the dystopian flavor of Black Mirror, but the authorities ensure that Personal data will not end up in the hands of porn sites. Only an anonymous “green light”, as if someone said at the door of a club: “You can enter, you don’t.”
Yet the question of privacy remains suspended as a cloud above the Thames. The promise that the data will be processed anonymously may not be enough to appease the anxiety of those who fear one silent filing of desires. Is it a question of trust: will the British citizen be willing to grant such an intimate fragment of his identity for such a private act? After all, porn, by its nature, is the kingdom of secret, of freedom, of the “unare”.
And while discussing security and control, there are those who observe the new scenario with a mixture of amazement and restlessness: A country that digitally makes a moral border, and that transforms pleasure into an identification ritual. The question that remains suspended is whether this “digital morality” is truly emancipation or a sophisticated form of social surveillance.
Smoke -free generation
If porn has become an access theme and no more than taboos, smoking is now a trenches war. Those who were born after January 1, 2009, in the UK, will never be able to buy a cigarette. Never. Not one of those of paper and tobacco, nor a pastel-color e-cig with bubblegum aroma. For now, the law speaks clearly: the sale of cigarettes (and the like) is granted on British soil only for adults. But with a particular accent. The British government is in fact introducing a pioneering legislation called Tobacco and Vapes Billwhich if approved will enter into force from January 1, 2027. This law will prohibit forever The sale of tobacco to anyone who was born the January 1, 2009 or afterthus creating the first “smoke -free generation“.
How the law will work
The accent is placed on dealerswhich will be sanctioned if they sell to those who do not have the right (up to £ 100 of immediate fine on the spot). Since the beginning of 2027born from January 1, 2009 onwards they will never be able to buy cigarettes (even if they grow and become adults); The legal sales age will increase one year every following year. People who are currently more than 18 years old and can legally buy they will not be penalized In the future.
What is looming is one detoxified generation by decreegrown in a world where cigarette is no longer a gesture of rebellion or an entry ritual in adulthood, but an archive memory, a vintage icon seen only in black and white films. The project, which began with Sunak and now carried out by the Labor government, is as ambitious as it is radical: Raise the minimum purchase age every year, until it coincides with eternity.
The declared objectives are noble: reduce tumors, lighten the costs of the health system, save lives. But under the surface, an uncomfortable question hovers: How much of this choice is an act of care, and how much is an exercise in control over individual freedoms?
A society without vices?
The British one looks like a society who decided to do detox, At least on paper: less vices, less excess, less “stolen looks” on social feeds. It is an operation that was born with the best intent – protect young people – but moves on the edge of an annoying question: As far as the state can go to defining what is right or wrong?
There are those who speak of a “New state moralism”a package of rules that not only protects, but shapes people’s behavior. And if the smoke will be tomorrow, the day after tomorrow could be alcohol or junk food. The idea of a society “without vices” fascinates and rests at the same time. It is version 2.0 of British Puritanism, covered with technology and data, which dictates the rhythms of what can be and cannot be done, even in the most private moments.
The dark side of the block
Porn, you know, always finds a secret passage. VPN, Dark Web, Borderline sites. Ofcom knows it well, but the bet is to cut at least the random exhibition: those videos that appear in the timelines even before asking what they are. It is not so much a hunt for adult consumers, as an argument to the early access of children to a universe that can become violent and distorted.
However, there is a collateral risk: to move adolescent curiosity to the darker and less regulated corners of the network, creating a paradox. More prohibition, more desire for transgression. The same goes for smoking: Prohibiting a cigarette could transform it from a simple vice to the object of worship for the youngest, a symbol of underground rebellion.
From the ban on smoke to porn with facial control, the United Kingdom is tracing A new social grammar. There are those who applaud, those who speak of “Nanny State,” those who include parallel markets of vices and desires. The real game, then, is played elsewhere: in the ability to educate, explain, accompany the boys in A world that will never be totally without temptations.
