The next speaker in this session at the ECREA 2026 conference in Brno is Neil Thurman, whose focus is on age verification legislation across various states in the US, and its effect on the consumption of online pornography by under-18s. This is observed here via clickstream data.
Concerns about online pornography are as old as the Internet itself, and were instrumental in the development of the controversial US Communication Decency Act (CDA), signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996 and subsequently found to be unconstitutional; the US has not had any federal legislation to restrict online pornography since then, while the market for online pornography has ballooned (three out of the top 20 most visited Websites in the world are now porn sites).
Partly in response, various US states have recently passed age verification laws for adult content sites, which are often defined as sites that contain more than 33% pornographic content and are commercial; consequently, sites must now try to verify the age of their users.
Past studies have shown that porn sites still show up in search results, but this does not tell us about whether they comply with such legislation; it does appear that search patterns have changed somewhat and now favour sites based outside of the US that do not comply with its laws. Similarly, Web tracking data also point to a drop in traffic to US-based and compliant sites, in favour of non-US-based and non-compliant sites.
The present study focussed on browsing data from a Comscore online user panel, gathering data from tracking tools on participants’ desktop and laptop devices; amongst these users, it focussed on 13-17-year-olds. Comscore also categorises Websites, and includes a pornography (‘XXX Adult’) category; it also groups data by ‘markets’, though some of these cut across US state lines.
This project used data from 61 such markets, from states with and without age verification requirements; it undertook a longitudinal analysis which also included the points at which many such requirements came into effect. Compared with control markets (without legislation), overall viewing of pornography declined slightly (but not statistically significantly) after restrictions were implemented; US sites like Pornhub declined much more substantially, while traffic to non-US sites like XVideos increased substantially.
The focus on desktop and laptop devices might obscure some other, mobile-only patterns here, of course, but overall it appears that the age verification legislation simply led to the displacement of some sites with others, and possibly also to the greater use of VPNs for circumventing location-specific restrictions. Greater effectiveness of age verification legislation might be enforced through greater sanctions on sites, and further enforcement of anti-VPN measures – but this might not be possible under US law.
