We are in the midst of a moral panic about pornography. The issue isn’t the violent, degrading content billions consume daily, but the inconvenience for people in the UK of having to prove they’re over 18 to see it.

In the fortnight since age verification rules kicked in, Pornhub’s UK traffic has almost halved. According to analytics firm Similarweb, traffic to XVideos, another leading adult site, was also down 47%, and OnlyFans saw traffic drop by over 10%. Whether that’s because the law is working, or because users have downloaded VPNs, is unclear. What is clear is that critics are getting hot and bothered about everything from data protection to government overreach.

Over half a million people have now signed a petition to scrap the Online Safety Act. Some have valid concerns about censorship, and it’s true that the way sites such as X — the platform where the highest percentage of children see pornography — have implemented age checks has led to some political content being censored. The obvious fix would be to remove children from social media altogether or to stop them buying smartphones. Yet “Online Safety Act bad” has become the rallying cry of the self-styled free thinker, perfectly in tune with tech giants whose profits depend on unfiltered traffic.

Meanwhile, Pornhub’s spokespeople warn that proving your age will push children to “darker” sites, as though that were a reason to do nothing. Fiona MacKenzie, director of think tank The Other Half, notes that Pornhub has even boasted of content tagged with kids’ media like Minecraft, Harry Potter and Fortnite being among its most popular. “Age verification (AV) isn’t perfect but will stop many children from easy access to these sites,” she says. “We have created astonishing harm by failing to prevent children’s exposure to violent porn — AV is only one thing that we must try. It might change men’s use of porn too; online porn makes access to ultraviolent abuse of women totally frictionless… I wouldn’t be surprised if having to put your face or email to your porn use kills the urge to view.”

What passes for “mainstream” on sites like Pornhub is saturated with cruelty. Strangulation — a leading cause of stroke in young women — is a standard feature on the landing pages of pornography sites. Notably, over half of men under 40 who admit to assaulting a woman during sex say porn influenced them.

The harms go beyond the bedroom. Frequent consumption is linked to depression, anxiety, loneliness and relationship breakdown. It distorts body image, lowers self-esteem, and undermines healthy attachments. Yet until last month, children could stumble across it with a few clicks. Over half of UK 11-year-olds have already seen porn.

Against this backdrop, the idea that age checks are a “sinister intrusion” is laughable. If they make users think twice, or feel watched, good — that’s deterrence. If they’re embarrassed, rather than bleating about privacy, they should ask why.

The internet’s founders were bold, brilliant — and dangerously naïve. They built a digital universe for people like themselves: adult men. They didn’t foresee that within a generation, children would spend as much time online as in what John Perry Barlow called “the world of flesh and steel”. In real life we don’t let people flash children in the street or lure them into brothels. Expecting the same basic standards online as in the offline world isn’t authoritarianism — it’s putting children’s lives above the convenience of porn users.

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

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