Beginning in mid-July, any commercial online pornography website serving viewers in the United Kingdom must implement an age verification process.

If the porn sites do not check ages of users, the owners risk facing sanctions, the government announced.

While it may be easy for someone younger than 18 years of age to enter a birth date that isn't theirs, the move prevents children from seeing porn in search results or when simply surfing the internet.

The requirement for sites to add age verification goes into effect July 15.

The UK says it is the first country in the world to take this step to implement new standards for the digital porn industry.

"Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online," said the UK's minister for digital, Margot James. "The introduction of mandatory age-verification is a world-first, and we’ve taken the time to balance privacy concerns with the need to protect children from inappropriate content. We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online, and these new laws will help us achieve this."