For the past three months, anyone who lives in Louisiana and opens up Pornhub has been met with a new prompt. The state’s laws, it says, require people who want to watch pornography to prove they are over 18. People seeking to access Pornhub are directed to a government-linked site where they can provide their ID. The move is the result of new laws designed to stop children from seeing explicit content. But it is just the beginning—the online age-verification industry is heating up.

Since January, three other states across the US—Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah—have copied Louisiana’s approach, passing their own versions of age-verification laws. Another 11 states, from Virginia to California, have proposed laws that will require users to confirm their age before they can view pornography, according to recent

 analysis. Some of these regulations are slated to take effect in the coming months.

It’s not just a US phenomenon either. Across the Western world, efforts are underway to introduce more age checks online. Since 2020, regulators in Germany and France have pushed porn sites to check people’s ages, and the UK and Australia are developing their own laws. These follow the introduction of more stringent safety rules that protect children online. 

The internet isn’t a child-friendly place. However, introducing age verification across the web is technical and complex. (In 2019, the UK ditched a multiyear plan to introduce age checks after encountering myriad problems

). The porn we watch is also highly sensitive—kinks are incredibly personal, and leaks of data online can be devastating. Privacy advocates, porn companies, and some regulators say the move to introduce age verification introduces significant problems.

“The concerns about young people accessing adult websites are real and widespread; less widespread is the understanding of limitations of various age-verification tools, and of the new dangers they might pose,” says Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center. “Many regulators and others seem to think of age verification as a solved problem; technologists and privacy activists, including activists focused on protecting children, are trying to explain that’s not the case.”

For years, the only thing stopping people from accessing porn online has been small checkboxes: Are you over 18? Yes or No? However, legislation proposed around the world would add more robust checks. Dozens of online age-verification companies have cropped up, with multiple ways to prove you’re old enough to access sites.