After worrying for years about the possibility of adolescents being exposed to too much pornography online, some states are moving quickly in 2023 to adopt legislation mandating age verification to keep kids off porn sites.
Louisiana became the first state to demand an ID from its citizens to view internet pornography last month. Since then, seven other states have hurried to imitate Louisiana’s example. A tracker from the Free Speech Coalition shows that similar legislation has been proposed in Florida, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia and that bills in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia appear to be the closest to becoming law. Some of these laws, if enacted, might be put into action right away, while others, in places like Florida and Mississippi, stipulate that they wouldn’t go into effect until July.
Yet not all states concur that imposing age verification quickly is the best option. According to a committee decision today, the vote on South Dakota’s age verification measure will now be postponed until the final day of the legislative session. Republican Jessica Castleberry, the bill’s sponsor, appeared to fall short in convincing the committee that the measure needed to be passed immediately, declaring during the hearing that “this is not your daddy’s Playboy. Extreme, degrading, and violent pornography is only one click away from our children.” She claimed to Ars that certain state politicians were too “easily swayed by powerful lobbyists.”
Laws were made for online pornography in Louisiana
At the hearing, lobbyists on behalf of the media and telecommunications industries opposed the plan. Justin Smith, an attorney for the South Dakota Newspaper Association, argued that the law was too ambiguous in how it defined harmful content and which commercial entities could be subject to liabilities, even though the South Dakota bill, like the Louisiana law, exempted news organizations.
These laws enforce age verification of all users, punish businesses that disregarded age verification requirements, and prevent the distribution of improper information to children online. The restrictions target websites where more than one-third of the information is deemed inappropriate for youngsters. South Dakota opponents predicted that states passing this legislation, like Louisiana, would find it difficult to regulate the entire Internet.”
Popular websites may be ready to deploy further restrictions to prevent local access by minors if new regulations are implemented in other states. When Louisiana’s ban went into force last month, Ars confirmed how fast well-known pornographic websites like Pornhub complied. Other politicians pushing age verification legislation in these states could not be reached by Ars for comment immediately.
Castleberry pronounced the South Dakota bill dead, while Arkansas’ proposed law has already been approved by the state’s Senate and will be evaluated by its House Rules committee tomorrow. This bill warns that exposure to pornography can harm a minor’s brain function and development, aggravate their emotional or medical conditions, cause deviant sexual arousal, encourage harmful sexual behaviours, and result in self-esteem problems or body image disorders.
Is it really helpful?
Tyler Dees, a Republican senator from Arkansas who sponsored the measure, told Vice that he did so in response to complaints from many of his voters about “the growing problems related to pornography and the advancement of technology and devices around our children.”
One solution to this so-called “public health crisis”—a term used by states like Arkansas and South Dakota to characterise the unfavourable effects of so much readily accessible online pornography—is age verification. Nevertheless, Common Sense Media advised against states adopting that term, stating that “there has been little research on the effects of pornography on adolescents, and so we should remain alert to alarmist headlines about pornography being a public health crisis or destroying America’s youth.”
