OPINION:
In today’s digital world, harmful and dangerous content is just a click or swipe away. And it’s free.
Harmful content is defined as material that depicts sexually explicit nudity or sexual activity that an average adult applying contemporary community standards would find appeals to the prurient interest of minors. Common Sense Media revealed that 75% of teens had viewed pornography by age 17, with 5% of respondents saying they had viewed pornography online for the first time by age 10. A 2023 Bark study showed that 58% of responding tweens and 75% of teens encountered nudity or sexual content on social media sites.
For two decades, criminal enterprises in the business of producing and distributing hard-core pornography, illegal under federal obscenity law, have operated with impunity, distributing content depicting themes of teen rape, incest and torture because the Justice Department has failed to prosecute these cases since George W. Bush was president.
The extent to which children are trafficked, preyed upon and depicted in sexually abusive ways on these platforms is alarming. In 2023, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline received 36.2 million reports (containing more than 105 million images and videos) of suspected online child sexual exploitation. It also saw a 300% increase in reports of online enticement between 2021 and 2023.
Yet while these horrific abuses of children continue across online platforms and services, proposed bipartisan bills such as the Kids Online Safety Act, the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act and the Stop Child Sexual Abuse Material Act, each designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse by holding tech companies accountable, await a floor vote in the Senate. Meanwhile, children continue to suffer.
While these federal bills languish in Congress, numerous states have taken the lead in protecting children from online pornography, child sexual abuse material, trafficking and other heinous online exploitation.
In May, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed the South Carolina Child Online Safety Act, making it the 18th state along with Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia to enact age verification laws requiring websites that contain material deemed “harmful to minors” to implement age verification systems to ensure users under the age of 18 cannot access such harmful material.
As a result of the actions of these states, MindGeek’s highly profitable $3 billion per year Pornhub has already blocked its toxic content in eight of them: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia. By holding the multibillion-dollar pornography industry accountable to verify the age of visitors and consumers, fewer children are being exposed and subsequently harmed by this graphic content. And the pornography industry is getting a long-overdue smackdown where it hurts most: the bottom line.
The 18 states that have acted to protect the innocence of children are to be commended. It is time, however, for the remaining states and our federal government to do the same. And yet legislation is but one step.
Public awareness and education must also be prioritized to prevent the online exploitation of children. It takes engagement from the government, law enforcement, corporate America — specifically Big Tech, faith communities and parents working together to combat online sexual exploitation and abuse. Imagine what a safer internet would look like if we all did our part.
• Donna Rice Hughes is the CEO of Enough Is Enough, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has been leading the fight to make the internet safer for children and families since 1994. Dean Grigg is its director of government and law enforcement relations and a former South Carolina assistant attorney general.
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