Social media posts claiming that Andy Burnham is changing the law so people will need ID to use social media, but not to vote in UK elections, are misleading.
In the UK you need photo ID to vote in some elections, such as general elections and local elections in England. However, voters in Scotland and Wales do not need to show photo ID at Scottish or Welsh Parliament elections or council elections.
The UK government is proposing to expand the types of ID people can use to vote in some elections to include UK-issued bank cards, but it isn’t scrapping the requirement to show ID in these elections.
And while users can use ID to verify their age online, this isn’t the only method. And there’s no evidence this will change.
Posts making these claims have been shared thousands of times across X, Facebook and Instagram.
The Online Safety Act already requires platforms that publish their own pornographic content to have robust age checks. The legislation does not list specific age verification methods. Ofcom guidance published in 2025 included methods that do not require users to provide ID, including facial and email-based age estimation.
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Under the government’s planned social media ban for under 16s, which is due to come into force in Spring 2027, children under that age will be prevented from accessing platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
The government says many adults won’t need to do extra age checks when the ban comes into force because they’ve already got an account that has been open more than 16 years, has a credit card connected to it or is linked to an email address that’s age-verified in other ways.
For those who do need to do extra age checks, the government says this “could be as simple as a facial age estimation check for over-18s”, adding “we know that having a range of methods to prove age is important to ensure online spaces are accessible”.
Ofcom recently published its guidance on the different options for effective age checks of 16-year-olds. It identified four age assurance methods it said “are currently capable of being highly effective at determining whether a user is 16 or over”. These don’t all require users to present ID as some use other methods such as facial age estimation.
Misinformation often spreads quickly on social media, so it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine before sharing. Our toolkit can help you do this.
