When it comes to sex, people will find a way—no matter what

Just as there’s been a steadily rising number of laws supposedly aimed at preventing underage individuals from accessing sexually explicit sites, so too is there increasing evidence that not only are these attempts as ill-thought-out as they are woefully ineffective, but they are also keeping vitally important health information out of the hands of the young adults who need it the most.

Making matters worse, age verification laws are also blocking access to the work of non-adult content creators; all of which are responsible for the sudden proliferation of alternative sites that understand—as with alcohol during prohibition—trying to ban anything, let alone anything related to sex, will just hide it (virtually) under the counter.

All of this suggests that if these anti-adult content maneuvers continue unchecked, tomorrow’s internet could be a hopelessly bland, sterilized-for-your-protection joyless wasteland with a sleazy back alley where, for a price, you can get what you want—as long as it’s in a plain brown wrapper.

Dirty pictures are bad

According to the Age Verification Providers Association, there are currently twenty-four states with adult content access laws on their books and six countries, including the USA, with three more nations poised to pass them as well.

Though their language may differ, each basically mandates that in order to view whatever these laws—and the age verification company responsible for setting up these types of digital gateways—consider to be sexually inappropriate, you’ll need to provide proof you’re old enough.

As these laws proliferate, we could see the end of an anonymous, sexually private internet even for adults.  As Molly Buckley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained to Rolling Stone:

One of our longest and strongest norms about the internet is not to reveal your most sensitive, most private information to strangers. And here we are with these bills trying to protect kids by asking them to share their face and ID, and possibly their parents’ faces and credit cards, to the biggest tech companies out there.

A small price to pay to keep kids from looking at dirty pictures?  Well, the truth is more and more research is showing these laws actually don’t not dissuade adult content viewership but encourage it.

Whatever you do—don’t look!

Case in point, using Google Trends data from age verification mandating states,  a team of Stanford University’s Polarization and Social Change Lab researchers, headed by David Lang, found lower instances of PornHub searches.

But — and this is a pretty respectable but — a markedly heightened interest in non-compliant platforms like XVideos.

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As Lang’s paper states, “The three-month results demonstrate a 51% reduction in searches for the largest compliant platform, accompanied by increases in searches for the next largest non-compliant platform (48.1%) and VPN (23.6%) services.” 

Even more succinctly, Zeve Sanderson, who’s the executive director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics as well as one of Lang’s fellow researchers, posted to X (formerly Twitter): “Why does this matter? While age-verification laws may successfully reduce traffic to regulated platforms, they also appear to drive users toward potentially less regulated & more dangerous alternatives.”

Underage persons with the bathwater

Every discussion about what may or might not be (in air quotes) “appropriate,” i.e., explicit or adult content, should start with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famously unhelpful determination, that is, whatever it is “I know it when I see it.” 

So if a Supreme Court Justice couldn’t define it, how can software developers, webhosts, or technologically illiterate lawmakers hope to set up systems to tell the difference between inappropriate or appropriate sites?

The answer is they can’t. All too often age verification filters block access to content that’s not at all erotic, including fine art, such as Michelangelo’s David.

Reason covered this well, particularly how Mississippi’s draconian new anti-porn ordinance led Dreamwidth Studios to the well-known artists’ site, to, as they explained:

Change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn’t like it — which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn’t like, you’re absolutely right.)

Mississippi’s far from alone in taking this sort of all-or-nothing approach, essentially criminalizing free speech, including or our right to express an interest in the pleasures—and educate ourselves in the responsibilities—of having a healthy sex drive.

Should underage persons be kept from seeing explicit content before they are emotionally ready to handle it?  Of course, but it’s glaringly obvious that age verification and clumsily constructed anti-porn laws could and will no doubt do more harm than good.

Image Sources: Depositphotos