Appendix: About Age Verification Data

Data around age-verification can be complex, as there has been limited study and even more limited real-world application of the proposed protocols. The data in FSC’s infographic is our attempt to draw attention to as much real-world data as possible, but it can be difficult to explain some of the complexity in a graphic.

Below are some of the details on that data, including where it came from, context that might be important, variables that could affect it, and other resources where one can dive deeper. This is not an easy issue and we’re happy to talk through any of it — including solutions that might be more effective. We don’t want minors on adult sites, either.

About “Compliant”

Throughout the infographic, we use the word “compliant” as shorthand to talk about platforms that are performing some form of age-verification or otherwise limiting access in those states, in an attempt to comply with these laws. However, the language in these laws varies from state to state, and is often vague and confusing. It’s unclear to us, and to many platforms, what systems or protocols count as compliance.


1. Compliance Percentages

Multiple studies have shown that the vast majority of visitors leave adult sites when they are asked to age-verify using methods required by law, such as ID upload. In a presentation of research to the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, researcher Olivier Blazy of the Ecole Polytechnique found that just 1.7% of visitors were willing to complete age-verification using methods such as those.

These numbers echo the experiences of individual platforms. JustFor.Fans initially attempted to comply with AV law, but found that just 3 in 4 visitors left the platform without even attempting to age-verify. Of those who remained, just 9% were willing to complete the process: a total verification rate of 2.25%.

Another leading adult platform, xHamster, reports that a mere 6% of visitors even attempt age verification and only half of them succeed. French platform Tukif related that since employing age-verification on their website, "less than five percent of users arriving at the verification system come out verified on the other side." Other platforms have reported similar numbers.

Some solutions do slightly better. Using a credit card, facial age-estimation or use of a mobile ID in a jurisdiction where it's commonly used for non-adult purposes can encourage greater compliance, but the overall numbers are still dismal, with less than 20% of consumers willing to comply.

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2. Fears and Concerns Over Verification

One of the concerns with age-verification protocols is that too few studies have been done on consumer attitudes showing the real-world effects. While different verification and systems and cultures may have different outcomes, the majority of consumers express deep concerns over age-verification. In a study conducted by Ofcom, the regulatory party charged with enforcing age-verification in the UK, researchers found that:

  • 61% of adult content consumers say they do not comply with age-verification because they do not believe their information will be safe.
  • 76% of adult consumers who do not age-verify said they do not want to share their personal information online in relation to adult content.
  • 37% of those who refuse to age-verify say it's at least partly due to the hassle.
  • 51% of those who refuse to age-verify say they can find the same content elsewhere without having to verify.

French platform Tukif related that since employing a "double anonymous" age-verification on their website, "less than five percent of users arriving at the verification system come out verified on the other side." Despite the use of a privacy-preserving solution, "It's killed traffic to our site."

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3. Difficulty of Compliance

A reporter at VICE went through the verification process of the most popular age assurance vendor and found that:

“As a first-time user of Yoti, we did not have a seamless experience and identified 52 simple steps between deciding to use this method and being able to access porn. People who have used Yoti before or who don’t have various timeouts or document-scanning errors are likely to have significantly fewer steps.... Due to ‘higher demand than usual,’ the app said, this would take longer than usual. How long is ‘usual,’ the app did not say, but ultimately processing took about five minutes. Once it finished, we had to go back to the xHamster site to scan the QR code again because the original one had timed out.”

Source: Samantha Cole. Accessing Porn in Utah Is Now a Complicated Process That Requires a Picture of Your Face. VICE, May 3, 2023


4. Increased VPN Interest

There is ample documentation of the increase in interest in Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in the wake of age verification laws taking effect in US States. These tools allow a user to appear to a website to be in a different city, state or country than they actually are. For example, someone in Texas could use a VPN to make it appear, to a website, that they are in Romania — thus avoiding age-verification protocols targeted at Texans.

Because of the nature of VPNs and the decentralization of the internet more generally, it’s hard to find clear indicators that would demonstrate the specific percentage of consumers who switch to VPNs to avoid age-verification protocols in “State X,” but the surge in interest and adoption is fairly clear.

  • “Several VPN service providers said they either saw a major jump in traffic or a spike in downloads after the law kicked in Wednesday — and since the site Pornhub announced it will shut out users in Utah in protest.... Surfshark VPN said the number of downloads of its product in Utah has approximately doubled in the past few days. Private Internet Access said visits to its website from Utah more than doubled in the 24 hours after the age-verification law went into effect. ExpressVPN said their website has seen a 300 percent boost in traffic from users in Utah since the law took effect.”
  • “Demand for VPN services in Utah have skyrocketed after adult website Pornhub disabled its website for visitors from the U.S. state due to the introduction of new age verification laws on May 2. VPN demand began to rise the day before the new rules kicked in, increasing by 142% on May 1 compared to the daily average over the 28 days prior. On May 2, demand for VPN services surged by 847% compared to that baseline.”
  • “Demand for VPN services jumped by 210% on December 31 in the U.S. state of Louisiana compared to the daily average over the 28 days prior. The increase came on the eve of new laws requiring age verification of Louisiana residents who visit adult websites that took effect from January 1.”
  • “North Carolina and Montana both passed new age verification laws last year, imposing restrictions on people looking to access adult material online. The laws came into effect on January 1 2024, leading to a surge in VPN demand in both states on December 28, which has continued into the new year. In Montana, demand peaked on December 29 at 482% higher than the daily average over the previous 28 days, while on the same day in North Carolina, demand was 266% higher than average.”
  • “Texas has become the latest U.S. state to enforce new laws requiring adult websites to verify the age of users visiting from that location. Demand for VPN services increased almost four-fold on March 15, jumping 275% compared to the daily average over the 28 days prior, in the wake of a court decision allowing the law to come into force.”
  • “Searches for virtual private networking (VPN) software briefly spiked in Texas this week after Pornhub suspended service in the state over a law forcing adult websites to verify the age or identities of their users. The four-fold rise in Google searches for tools that can circumvent the state-level blocking suggests the law may already be having unintended side effects, days after a federal appeals court upheld the legislation and said it could remain in effect.”
  • “A spokesperson for NordVPN — a Lithuanian virtual private network service and one of the most well-known VPN providers — said demand from Idaho in July spiked 46% above what it was in June. And website traffic was 20% higher in July. Also, searches for “vpn” increased greatly in Idaho right around the time Pornhub was blocked on June 28, according to Google Trends.”
  • “Experts speaking with PopSci say there are signs internet users in many of these states are turning to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to access otherwise blocked materials. Leading VPN provider Top10 VPN claims demand from VPN services jumped 275% on March 15, the same day Pornhub cut off access in Texas. The site says demand for VPNs similarly surged by 210% the day after a similar law took effect in Louisiana last year. ExpressVPN, another popular VPN provider, told PopSci it saw increased web traffic to its site the day anti-porn, online age verification bills took effect in seven out of eight states.”
  • "The data paints a clear picture of the soaring demand for VPN services in states such as Florida (1,150%), Oklahoma (1,060%), Utah (967%), and Alabama (542%), among others. This surge in VPN usage suggests users are circumventing the IP-block and accessing Pornhub (and other restricted websites) through IPs where the block is not implemented."

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5. VPN Usage

In 2023, research found that 41% of youth aged 11-14 years use VPNs.

Another study of 16‐ and 17‐year‐olds in the United Kingdom found that 45.7% had used a VPN or Tor browser and 22.9% knew what they were.

In 2023, virtual private network (VPN) usage stood at approximately 42 percent in the United States among adults and grew to 46% in 2024.

Sources:


6. Texas Google Searches

In May 2024, using a VPN to access adult sites via a Texas-based server, Free Speech Coalition searched for common adult searches, including “MILF porn,” “big boobs porn,” and “gay porn.” Of the top twenty search results returned, in each case, just one link required age-verification. Other links either didn’t age-verify, were social media sites theoretically exempted from the law, or had blocked the state entirely.

Source: Internal data compiled by Free Speech Coalition using a VPN to access a server in Houston, June 2024


7. Case Study: North Carolina

In states that have passed age-verification laws, traffic has dropped dramatically on legal, compliant adult sites, and, in the same period, risen on non-compliant sites located outside of the country. While this trend is observable in numerous states, North Carolina provides a fairly typical example.

North Carolina’s age-verification law went into effect on January 1, 2024. Using data collected by SimilarWeb Pro, the benchmark traffic intelligence service, we can see the stark difference in traffic between December 2023 and three months later, in March 2024. Traffic in the state drops on a basket of sites that are compliant, and rises dramatically on a basket of sites that are not. Illegal and pirate sites are the unlikely beneficiaries of the laws.

Unfortunately, these graphs can not measure the true impact, since while large compliant sites are relatively easy to identify, the number of non-compliant pirate and foreign sites is too large to accurately represent.

Source: Traffic data accessed via Similarweb Pro.


8. Adult Content on Social Media

A survey of 16‐ and 17‐year‐olds in the United Kingdom showed that more (63%) had seen pornography on social media platforms.

An Australian regulator’s research shows this includes both intentional and unintentional access, occurring across pornography sites (70%), social media feeds (35%), ads on social media (28%), social media messages (22%), group chats (17%), and social media private group/pages (17%). Teens said they commonly find pornography on social media (60%) including Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok.

A recent survey commissioned by the Children’s Commissioner in England found 41% of participants who had seen online pornography had viewed it on Twitter, a social media service which allows pornography but requires it to be tagged as sensitive and hidden from under 18 accounts (though does not age-verify users). This was more than dedicated pornography sites (37%) and other social media sites (Instagram 33%, TikTok 23%, Reddit 17%).

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) found it was also very common for respondents to have seen pornography through social media. The most common platforms were Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. Of minors who had intentionally sought out explicit content, 44% said they had done so on social media.

Common Sense Media’s Teens and Pornography report found that 38% of teens who’d sought out pornography found it on social media, with younger teens between 13 and 14 more likely (49%) than older teens (32%).

Lawmakers were purposeful in the decision to carve social media platforms out of the law’s application. A leading sponsor of one of West Virginia’s bills told reporters that the law only applies to sites where at least 33% of the content is harmful to minors is meant to "act as a buffer" for social media websites that host adult content, but pornography is not the "intent of the website." "That protects us from having to go after, you know, requiring social media companies to require the same type of verification that you would of Pornhub or something like that," he said.

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9. Messaging Apps

Discord, Telegram, and Whatsapp are messaging apps that support public multi-user channels similar to the chat rooms of the 1990’s. Discord has been identified as a particularly concerning platform for minors' exposure to pornographic content and a recent investigation found "scores of YouTube channels" that used Telegram to distribute pornographic content, including channels with "over 650 members" sharing adult videos.

A 2023 survey of 9-17 year-old children in the United States revealed that messaging apps are extremely popular with children and that children experience online sexual interactions on all of them:

App Have Used Use Daily Sexual interactions by all minors Sexual interactions by daily users
Discord 48% 23% 7% 14%
Telegram 20% 9% 4% 22%
Whatsapp 43% 19% 8% 18%

Sources:


10. Search Engines

According to research by the British Board of Film Classification in 2020, minors who sought out pornography were more likely to look for it using “image or video search engine[s]” (53%) than dedicated pornography websites (43%). A 2021 survey of 16‐ and 17‐year‐olds in the United Kingdom showed that more (51%) had seen pornography on search engines.

Sources:


11. Four Million Porn Sites

Source: Ahmed, Faraz et al., The Internet is For Porn: Measurement and Analysis of Online Adult Traffic. Michigan State University, 2016 IEEE 36th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.


12. Better Solutions

In 2016, Pew reported that 39% of parents said they used parental controls or other technological tools to block, filter or monitor their teen’s online activities. But in 2023, Internet Matters found that while 37% of parents are aware of parental control software, only 15% actually use it.

A device-based approach to age verification was proposed by Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Anxious Generation, and has support from a diverse group of stakeholders that includes Meta, Pinterest, USC’s Ravi Iyer, Minnesota’s Attorney General, the Heritage Foundation, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

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Further Reading