Pornhub’s Louisiana traffic has dropped 80 percent since the state passed a pornography age-verification bill that requires users to prove they are 18 or older. The pornography website halted operations altogether in Utah, Mississippi, and Virginia, three states in which restrictive laws have been in place for months. Porn regulation is working, at last. And it’s glorious.
Marc Novicoff writes for Politico:
Some angry porn users have called their legislators, but that has not dimmed the joy of lawmakers. According to Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler, the chief sponsor of Utah’s bill, many of his colleagues are celebrating the improbable and unexpected retreat of the pornography behemoth. Weiler said his colleagues “think it’s hilarious” and have been “high-fiving” each other in boyish triumph.
Minors can bypass age restrictions (Utah saw an increase in Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which allow children to surf undetected), but workarounds are unwieldy and limit the total number of users relative to unrestricted access. The loudest voices against regulation are the ACLU and the $100 billion porn industry, but there’s bipartisan public support for regulation. Novicoff writes:
An important consensus seems to have emerged that childhood exposure to pornography is one of many things negatively affecting the minds of Gen Z. Anxiety is mounting around the country over the devastating and humiliating mental health crisis afflicting my generation. Some blame social media; others chime in to add oversensitivity, overdiagnosis and a therapeutic culture. It hardly seems like a leap to throw limitless internet porn into the blame basket.
As the Louisiana law posits, “Pornography may also impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
Discourse on the sexualization of children (sadly) varies: The country has strong opinions for and against LGBTQ books in school and even stronger thoughts about gender transition and sexual reassignment surgeries for minors. Thank God that we, for the most part, agree that porn is addictive, wicked, and unsuitable for children.
Novicoff recalls the era “when high school boys huddled around a Playboy magazine given to one of them by their divorced father.” That gross but tame era was replaced by an industry responsible for 73 percent of teens ages 13 to 17 now having watched pornography online. The average age for first viewing porn is twelve, and more than half of teens encounter porn accidentally. It’s difficult for parents to regulate their child’s internet consumption — the easiest way to prevent a kid from seeing sexual material online is by banning technology altogether. Bans on electronics for minors are improbable and unwise, which is why age-restrictive laws seem to be the best defenses against porn. Let’s hope they keep working.