Kids Trick Online Age Checks by Drawing Moustaches

The Challenge of Bypassing Online Age Checks

A concerning trend has emerged among children in the United Kingdom, with a third of them admitting to bypassing online age checks in the past two months. Some have even gone as far as drawing fake moustaches on their faces to trick facial recognition software. This alarming behavior highlights the ongoing struggle between digital safety measures and the ingenuity of young users trying to access content they are not yet old enough for.

The findings come from a report by Internet Matters titled "The Online Safety Act: Are Children Safer Online?" which surveyed 1,270 children aged 9-16 and their parents across the UK. The study aimed to assess whether the country's landmark online safety legislation is effectively protecting children from harmful content.

One mother shared her experience with researchers, revealing that she caught her son using an eyebrow pencil to draw a moustache on his face to pass a platform’s facial age estimation check. The attempt was successful, as he was verified as 15, despite being only 12 years old.

How Children Bypass Age Checks

The report found that 46% of children believe age checks are easy to bypass, while only 17% find them difficult. Among the methods described by children include entering a fake birthdate, using someone else’s identification, submitting videos of other people’s faces, and even using video game characters to fool facial recognition tools.

An 11-year-old girl shared her observations, saying, “I've seen clips of people online where they'll get clips of video game characters like turning their head and use it for age verification.” Older children were more confident about circumventing checks, with 52% of those aged 13 and over saying age verification is easy to beat, compared with 41% of those aged 12 and under.

Reasons for Bypassing Age Checks

The most common reasons children gave for bypassing age checks were:

• To access a social media platform they were not old enough to use (34%)
• To join an online game or gaming community (30%)
• To use a messaging app (29%)

The report also found that just over a quarter of parents — 26% — have allowed their child to bypass age checks, with 17% actively helping them do so. Parents said they did this when they felt confident the content was appropriate for their child.

One mother of a 13-year-old shared, “I have helped my son get around them. It was to play a game, and I knew the game, and I was happy and confident that I was fine with him playing it.”

The Effectiveness of the Online Safety Act

The UK’s Online Safety Act came into force in July 2025, requiring social media platforms, gaming sites, and other services to implement age-appropriate safety measures. There are signs the legislation is having some effect. Around 68% of both parents and children report noticing new safety measures on the platforms children use, including improved reporting tools, content warnings, and restrictions on features such as livestreaming.

However, nearly half of children (49%) said they had experienced harm online in the past month, including seeing violent content (12%), content promoting unrealistic body types (11%), and racist, homophobic or sexist content (10%) — all of which should be prohibited under the Act’s Children’s Safety Codes.

Children in focus groups also described seeing videos of the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk on their social media feeds. “I saw it on Snapchat. I broke down into tears and then told my mum immediately,” said one 14-year-old girl.

Recommendations for Better Child Safety Online

The report recommends that children's safety be built into online platforms from the outset rather than added in response to harm. It suggests that access be determined by the level of risk a platform presents and that access “should be tailored to their stage of development, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.”

It also stresses the role parents play in child safety and that they should be provided with “guidance on how to set up parental controls, through to clear, accessible explanations of how algorithms work and influence what children see online.”