Somewhere in Britain right now, a man will be hunched over his laptop searching Pornhub for clips tagged “little”, “tiny” or “exxxstramall”. Ofcom estimates there are 14 million regular porn users in the UK, mostly men, and it’s no secret that “teen” has topped search charts for years, with evidence suggesting that the industry’s most bankable commodity is the sexualisation of girls barely out of childhood.

Now, in the wake of Channel 4’s 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story, the Government’s newly formed Independent Pornography Taskforce is preparing to recommend a ban on “barely legal” content online. Conservative peer Baroness Bertin, who led a review into pornography earlier this year, says the documentary will be on the agenda at the group’s next meeting.

Ironically, anti‑porn campaigners now find themselves offering reluctant thanks to porn performer Tia Billinger, better known as Bonnie Blue, for putting the matter on the political agenda. A marketing genius, she’s built her brand on extreme acts and calculated provocation, embodying what Bertin noted in her report: “more extreme and divisive content” keeps viewers hooked.

In the documentary, Billinger boasts about hunting “the most barely legal 18‑year‑old” she can find, “ideally just 30 seconds past midnight”, and invites younger OnlyFans creators — some in school uniforms and with bunches — onto a classroom‑themed porn set. These inexperienced women joined in hoping that an orgy with Bonnie Blue might boost their online profiles.

This pseudo‑child pornography isn’t just distasteful — it undermines efforts to detect genuine child sexual abuse material (CSAM) by blurring the line between fantasy and crime. But the existence of the barely legal category is inevitable; the porn industry is locked in an arms race to sink ever lower without breaking the law. For some users, consenting adult women no longer suffice; the sex must be rougher, the performers younger, the degradation more graphic. This path ends at real CSAM.

If every man who sought out CSAM were prosecuted, Britain’s prison system would buckle — and the authorities know it. In 2020 Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, warned that young men were being drawn into CSAM after becoming “desensitised” to mainstream porn. The numbers are now so overwhelming that Bailey advised focusing on only the worst offenders. Consequently, today eight in 10 men convicted of downloading CSAM avoid prison altogether.

Against this backdrop, a ban on “barely legal” content risks being little more than a political fig leaf. We already have laws against extreme pornography, including rape porn — and yet prosecutions are vanishingly rare. Most cases pursued by the CPS involve bestiality because, unlike humans, animals can’t be said to consent. More worryingly, campaign group CEASE revealed that police guidance discourages investigating illegal porn offences; rape porn is usually found by accident. So it seems the problem isn’t a lack of legislation — it’s the lack of appetite to enforce it.

Offline, the British Board of Film Classification bans depictions of sexual violence, simulated rape, and sexualised portrayals of children. Online, it’s an unpoliced red‑light district where material that would never be shown in a cinema is freely available on a teenager’s phone.

The taskforce is considering using the Crime and Policing Bill this autumn as one way to outlaw “barely legal” content. Bertin puts it simply: “Whatever is illegal offline should be illegal online.”

She’s right. But the existence of “barely legal” porn isn’t a legislative failing: it’s a moral one. Until we prosecute men for possessing CSAM, enforce existing bans on rape porn, and treat extreme pornography as the serious offence it is, another law will achieve little. The obscenity isn’t just what men search for — it’s that we already have the laws to stop them and choose not to use them. Until that changes, Bonnie Blue may do more to awaken the public than any politician or journalist. And that should shame us all.

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Josephine Bartosch is assistant editor at The Critic and co-author of Pornocracy.

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