Pornhub responded to Utah’s new age-verification law by blocking access for everyone in the state.
In Virginia, users will soon need to verify that they are at least 18 years old to access pornography websites, as a growing number of states consider legislation to protect children from viewing adult content.
Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin signed age-verification legislation into law on May 12, following in the footsteps of Louisiana and Utah, which have already implemented similar laws.
The laws require verification to access websites where at least one third of the content can be considered “material harmful to minors.” Users must provide government-issued IDs or biometric scans, or install age-verification software.
The Virginia law goes into effect July 1.
The passage of the Virginia law comes as a battle is shaping up in Utah, where Pornhub responded to the state’s new age-verification law by blocking all users in the state from accessing its content. Now, users in Utah who attempt to enter the site are met with a video from an adult-film actor explaining the company’s rationale for the blackout.
“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and, in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” adult performer Cherie DeVille says in the video message. “Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Utah,” she later explains, urging the viewer to contact their representatives to protest the measure.
Dawn Hawkins, the CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which advised Louisiana and Utah on their laws, said legislation is needed to protect children from pornography because research is clear that it can be extremely harmful to children.
“It has negative impacts on their brain, on their emotional development, on their own kind of self, the way they see themselves,” she told National Review. “Many studies are showing that pornography exposure is also a tool in grooming and that . . . youth who are exposed are more vulnerable to sexual assault and predatory acts.”
With the public-health harms in mind, “it’s important to do what we can to restrict young people’s exposure to it.”
She disputed claims from Pornhub and other critics that the age-verification legislation creates a risk of data and privacy issues. “That is so far from the truth because today there’s an entire existing industry of age-verification technology and standards that respect privacy,” she said, pointing to gambling websites and also to the use of age verification in many cases in the U.K.
“You don’t actually have to upload your ID or credit card in order for them to verify. They’re just playing on everybody’s fears,” Hawkins said. “A number of new technologies have been made that do respect privacy.”
She also dismissed criticisms that it infringes on the privacy of adults, arguing that adults can still access the material after age verification.
“This is really about protecting kids from exposure and just adding one step for them. And it’s still so easy for adults to get it,” she said, noting there has been bipartisan support for age-verification legislation in several states. Utah’s age-verification law passed with unanimous support.
Utah state senator Todd Weiler, who introduced the legislation in Utah, said Pornhub’s decision to pull out of Utah is “a net positive for the state of Utah,” but “more than anything, it’s a publicity stunt.”
“I think they’re trying to put pressure on me and other legislators to back off,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to be a successful strategy for them in Utah.”
The Free Speech Coalition, a California-based trade group representing the adult-entertainment industry, has filed a legal challenge against Utah’s law, arguing the legislation is in violation of the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment.
“The Utah law restricts adults’ access to legal speech and violates decades of Supreme Court precedent,” Alison Boden, executive director of Free Speech Coalition, said in a news release “We are fighting not only for the rights of our members and the larger adult entertainment community, but for the right of all Americans to access constitutionally-protected expression in the privacy of their own home.”
The group has claimed, among other things, that Utah doesn’t currently have the capability to verify digital IDs online.
Weiler acknowledged that Louisiana is ahead of Utah on the digital IDs, but noted that several other adult websites are complying with Utah’s law and that Pornhub has complied with Louisiana’s law.
“When Pornhub started complying with Louisiana’s law, they quickly found that their clicks decreased by . . . 80 percent. And so, I think when Utah’s law went into effect two months later, they decided to adopt a different strategy and say, ‘Oh, gosh, we can’t comply with this,'” said Weiler, who has been working on the pornography issue for at least seven years alongside a constituent who has been a strong advocate for protecting children from pornography.
Weiler predicted that all 16 states that have declared pornography to be a public-health crisis will pass some type of age-verification law if the courts allow it.
“I think some people have misconstrued my legislation to try to say or try to block adults from viewing pornography, and I’ve never gone down that road,” he said. “I think this is America. If an adult wants to view pornography, that’s legal. It’s even protected by the Constitution. But I also think that asking an adult to verify their age is no more of an impairment for pornography than it is for buying alcohol.”
Critics of the law have claimed the efforts are “part of a broader effort by the Christian right to ban or censor protected speech.” But Weiler said that while he is a Christian, his efforts as a legislator have focused on trying to protect children, not trying to outright ban pornography. Earlier this year, a study found the average age kids first saw pornography online was twelve years old. Some 15 percent had seen adult content online by age ten or younger.
“We don’t let nine-year-olds walk into 7-Eleven and buy Budweiser,” he said. “We make adults show their ID so we know that they’re old enough. We don’t let eleven-year-old girls order vaping products to be shipped to their homes on the internet. People are kind of acting like this age-verification thing is something new.” He pointed to sites that sell alcohol and tobacco products and offer gambling services as sites that cannot cater to children.
He suggested some of the pushback against the age-verification law has come in anticipation of Utah’s social-media law, which was passed in March but will not take effect until March 2024, and will require age verification to access social-media platforms. Those under 18 will need parental consent to access the platforms.
Meanwhile, the Free Speech Coalition has suggested that parents using device filters to limit what their children see is a more practical and effective solution to the problem of children viewing adult content.
Hawkins acknowledged that while the age-verification laws are “common sense” simple measures that protect children from “really easy access,” age verification is not the strongest solution. “But everything that we can do to protect kids from exposure to this harmful material is welcome.”
Instead, a stronger solution is to require that smartphones and tablets are sold with filters turned on, she said. Devices are currently made with built-in filters that are turned off when they are sold.
“We’re advocating that the built-in controls just be turned on, especially when they’re activated by children,” she said. When a minor enters their birth date to activate an iPhone, the filters should already be automatically turned on, she said.
Hawkins pointed to the success of a September 2021 update in which Google announced it would have safety settings set to default on Chromebooks used for K-12 educational purposes. The settings can now only be changed by those with administrative privileges.
Utah previously passed a law in March 2021 to require all cellphones and tablets sold in the state to automatically block pornography. However, the measure included a provision that keeps the law from taking effect unless five other states enact similar laws.