The Economics of Regulation

The adult entertainment industry has a clear interest in keeping explicit content accessible only to adults. Children don’t pay for pornography, and pirated material already costs legitimate creators thousands of dollars every month. I personally spend hundreds more removing stolen videos from illegal websites. If all explicit material were truly locked behind a paywall, legitimate creators would generate more revenue — just as adult entertainment did during the “Golden Age” of magazines, VHS tapes, and theaters.

OnlyFans’ success demonstrates this principle. It thrived because it presented itself as a mainstream social platform, while explicit content remained available only to paying subscribers. This balance between visibility and controlled access created a sustainable ecosystem for adult creators.

The Real Purpose Behind Age Verification

Current governmental efforts to enforce strict age-verification for adult content seem less concerned with protecting minors and more aligned with advancing digital identity systems. These measures accelerate the normalization of online surveillance and the erosion of anonymity — all under the pretext of child safety.

In practice, these systems don’t work. Teenagers today are digitally literate and easily bypass verification using VPNs, proxy servers, or offshore websites. Only companies in the U.S., U.K., and E.U. are likely to comply with these laws, while unregulated platforms abroad will continue to ignore them. As a result, children curious about sexuality will gravitate toward illegal and unmoderated sources, where consent and legality are not guaranteed.

The unintended consequence is paradoxical: the harder you make it to access legitimate adult material, the more traffic flows to unregulated and potentially exploitative platforms. No government can realistically track or ban every illegal site, and VPNs make such restrictions meaningless. The only effective solution is education and parental supervision, not blanket prohibition.

California stands out as an exception. Its recent law requires device-level age verification — meaning verification happens on the user’s device rather than through ID uploads or facial recognition databases. This approach could actually reduce exposure while preserving privacy — a rarity among recent policy attempts.

Cultural Contradictions and Early Sexual Narratives

A deeper cultural contradiction underlies the debate about age verification: societies differ sharply in what kinds of sexual information they deem acceptable for children. In many contexts, children are exposed early to religious or moral teachings about purity, virginity, or sexual sin — often before learning basic anatomy or concepts like consent.

I was seven years old when I first learned about “virginity” at catechism classes. At that age, I knew nothing about menstruation, reproduction, or anatomy. The taboo around discussing sex in scientific or healthy ways coexists with an uncritical acceptance of moral or religious indoctrination.

“Purity culture” is a striking example. Events like “purity balls,” where girls pledge their virginity to their fathers, are publicly celebrated as moral education. Meanwhile, comprehensive sex education — which focuses on consent, emotional literacy, and health — is often denounced as corrupting. Even religious texts contain graphic sexual narratives, yet these are freely accessible to children without restriction. The real issue, then, isn’t sexual content itself, but who controls its interpretation and dissemination.

The Legal and Moral Paradox of Adolescent Sexuality

Most countries set the age of consent between 14 and 18. This means societies implicitly recognize that adolescents are capable of sexual activity and even reproduction. In some jurisdictions, minors can access reproductive healthcare; in others, abortion remains heavily restricted. Yet the same societies that tolerate teenage sexuality legally often treat the mere depiction of sexuality as morally dangerous.

This contradiction reveals that public morality is less about protecting youth and more about maintaining control over sexual knowledge. The panic around exposure to sexual imagery reflects discomfort with autonomy and modernity — not genuine concern for children’s wellbeing.

A Rational Path Forward

If we truly care about the mental and sexual health of young internet users, we must move beyond political theater and adopt evidence-based policies. That means comprehensive sex education, digital literacy training, and realistic parental tools — not ID-based surveillance systems that funnel curious young users toward darker corners of the internet.

Protecting children should never be an excuse to dismantle privacy, empower data brokers, or entrench government surveillance. We need laws that work in practice, not ones that sound good in campaign speeches. The future of a safer internet depends on rational policy, scientific understanding, and respect for human curiosity — not fear.