Written by Michael Thervil
In another move to block minors from gaining access to online pornography, Florida has set itself up to be the 13th state in the United States to block adult porn site Pornhub in their state. How people feel about the state of Florida's move appears to be a three-way split. On one side, there are people that feel as if they are saving the sanctity of their children from the perceived harmful effects of pornography. On the other hand, there are people who are taking the position that by passing an age verification law, they are exposing the privacy of the consumers of adult porn to be exploited by 3rd parties. Then there's another section of the population that feels as despite the implementation of legal safety measures there is still no way of policing people whether they're a minor or not from consuming pornography of any kind.
Currently besides Florida being the newest state to ban Pornhub, the other 12 states are as follows:
Kentucky
Indiana
Idaho
Kansas
Nebraska
Texas
North Carolina
Montana
Mississippi
Virginia
Arkansas
Utah
With that, there’s another 19 states on the books that require a form of a state issued ID in order to view pornography on their website.
The Florida House Bill (HB 3) states that an age verification will be required for anyone seeking to consume adult material online and for websites that fail to comply with the bill, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2025, they will be subjected to a $50,000 fine. Florida governor Ron DeSantis even went a step further and stated that he wants to put a total ban on Pornhub in the state of Florida. His defense claim for wanting to take such actions stem from the fear of predators that are seeking to sexually exploit minors.
In a recent statement concerning this, Gov. Ron DeSantis stated:
“You can have a kid in the house safe, seemingly, and then you have predators that can get right in there into your own home. You could be doing everything right, but they know how to get and manipulate these different platforms.”
But the truth is, most sexual predators tend to acquire minors for sexual purposes through other means. Another stunning statistic comes from Statista. On April 5, 2024, they discovered that most of the viewership of porn comes from mobile phone users (11.4 billion) since its startup in 2007. It was also discovered that well over 90% of its viewership is generated via cell phones (97%). Another hard truth to swallow would be the fact that it's quite possible that with the banning of Pornhub and the restrictive measures placed on other pornography sites, that there will be an uptick in people, including minors making their own homemade amateur pornography.
With the endless group chats on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, and other digital means and avenues to circumvent the law, there just be a black market created for people of all ages that wish to consume pornographic material – like it or not. With all this talk of banning Pornhub and restricting like it going on, it makes people wonder if America learned anything from the era of prohibition. We are in the age of what’s known as “Social Porn”. There's no putting this Genie back in the bottle.
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