Missouri’s age verification law, enacted on November 30, is the halfway mark for the sweep of age verification laws across the country.

As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

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  • DupaCycki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    715·
    20 hours ago

    No offence to anyone, but this post strikes me as coming straight from a spokeperson for Aylo (formerly MindGeek). A mix of baseless claims and straight up misinformation, that happen to align with the company’s business model.

    You speak as if porn sites are analogous to social media and it’s perfectly normal to record your experiences and post them online. Which it absolutely isn’t, anywhere in the world. ‘Expressing your sexuality’ and porn are entirely separate and have very little to do with each other.

    It is widely known and confirmed that pornographic content comes with a broad spectrum of negative effects, especially for children and adolescents. The latter really should be common sense in 2025. Watching porn isn’t always bad and can be beneficial in some ways (as some sources below even highlight), but those cases represent a small minority.

    Below are some quotes and just a few out of countless sources providing much more reliable information on the topic of pornography’s effects. I strongly recommend reading at least some, because this comment is like ignoring decades of scientific literature and traveling in time back to the 1700s.

    Prolonged exposure to pornography is known to lead to habituation, resulting in blunted processing of pleasurable stimuli and greater sensitivity to negative stimuli (21). Continuous use of pornography impairs emotional processing capacity and flattens affect, reducing emotional connection to real-life sexual experiences.

    Source: Impact of pornography consumption on children and adolescents

    Research shows that frequent porn use hijacks the brain’s reward system and changes the brain’s structure, much like addictive substances.

    This means that prolonged pornography use can weaken natural pleasure responses and reinforce compulsive behavior.

    A 2014 study found that heavy porn users showed significantly reduced activity in critical areas of the brain responsible for motivation and impulse control, suggesting long-term neurological rewiring.

    Source: The Hidden Cost of Pornography: How It Shapes Your Brain and Behavior

    Age of first exposure was significantly associated with reported need for longer stimulation and more sexual stimuli to reach orgasm when using pornography, decrease in sexual satisfaction, and quality of romantic relationship, neglect of basic needs and duties due to pornography use, and self-perceived addiction in both females and males. (…) In the opinion of most of the surveyed students, pornography may have adverse effects on human health, although access restrictions should not be implemented.

    Source: Prevalence, Patterns and Self-Perceived Effects of Pornography Consumption in Polish University Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

    Additional sources:

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      16·
      2 days ago

      Assuming what you’re saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state’s responsibility? Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?

      The answer to all of those I think is no.

      There’s no analogous ID check for violent media, so far as I know.

      There could be a raging wildfire and I would hesitate if a Republican said “let me deal with it”. They are fundamentally untrustworthy.

      That’s on top of the deep irony of the same party that goes on about “small government” and “parents rights” is typically the same one pushing draconian anti-porn laws. It’s a joke. “A government small enough to fit in your bedroom”. Their motivations are so corrupt I am extremely skeptical of anything they propose.

      • DupaCycki@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        20 hours ago

        Assuming what you’re saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state’s responsibility?

        In general, yeah. It’s quite literally what the government is supposed to be for. When there’s a widespread problem affecting a lot of people, it’s precisely the government’s job to step in, regulate and solve it.

        Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?

        These two I can agree with the answer being ‘no’. The problem isn’t that it’s not an issue or that the government shouldn’t interfere. The two main problems I can identify here are:

        • The current American government (and most of the previous ones) cannot be trusted to handle this in good faith,
        • There are several more pressing matters that should be addressed first.

        And a bonus issue. There’s currently no sufficient and reliable infrastructure to even implement restrictions on pornography, as we can plainly see from the results of recent attempts. But this ties in to the first problem. If they really wanted to solve the issue in any capacity, obviously they’d start by building the necessary digital infrastructure.

        All in all, I think you brought up important points and I pretty much fully agree with you on them. However, to me it seems like they’re not exactly relevant to the discussion. Or at least that’s not what I was trying to address.

        My main goal was to refute the previous guy’s theses that pornography has no confirmed negative effects on people, especially the part about children, since it literally takes seconds to find dozens of studies on this topic. I didn’t mean to speak about whether or not the government should do anything, let alone defend the current US efforts to regulate porn, if we can even call them that. In fact, one of the studies I quoted stated that the participants did not feel a government intervention is needed, which I felt was a crucial detail to highlight.

    • MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      2 days ago

      Prolonged exposure to pornography is known to lead to habituation, resulting in blunted processing of pleasurable stimuli and greater sensitivity to negative stimuli (21). Continuous use of pornography impairs emotional processing capacity and flattens affect, reducing emotional connection to real-life sexual experiences.

      Source: Impact of pornography consumption on children and adolescents

      This is disingenuous. This issue is caused by prolonged use, as in unhealthy addictive behavior. Framing it as a result of porn access in general is flagrantly dishonest.

      Actually it seems like all of your points regard excessive and unhealthy usage. You’re portraying these as results of any level of exposure and that is blatantly dishonest.