Protecting minors from pornography

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: State laws cracking down on objectionable websites.

A quick word to parents: this story is good news, but it deals with a topic not intended for young ones. You may want to pause and come back later, or skip ahead 6 minutes.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Several states have passed new laws this year that will hold websites with pornographic content liable if minor children can access them. Utah, Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Montana have passed these laws with bipartisan support. Other states aren’t far behind.

BROWN: In a handful of states, these laws have produced an unexpected outcome: Some so-called adult sites are cutting off access altogether. This is a first in the quest to regulate the online porn industry—but now, the laws have to survive multiple lawsuits.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: Deepak Reju is a Biblical counselor with experience helping people overcome pornography addictions.

DEEPAK REJU: The basic way to understand it is it begins to rewire your brain. If you think about, like, grass. And if if people keep walking down that same stretch of grass, after time, the grass not only gets worn down, it turns into a dirt path.

According to a survey by Common Sense Media, children on average first see pornography at age 12. Some even younger. The survey also showed that over half of those children access it accidentally.

REJU: What we have now is the younger generations that have been raised up on technology.

Reju says now he has college-aged and older students coming to him after already being addicted for 15-plus years, cutting those pathways deep into their brains.

But some states are trying to change that.

In June of last year, Louisiana was the first state to pass a law that holds websites with adult content liable if they fail to verify their users are over 18 years old. Now, six other states have followed, and others are trying to get them on the books.

The new law in Texas will go into effect on September first. State Representative Matt Shaheen helped author the bill.

MATT SHAHEEN: I think what you're seeing is we're we're adapting a little bit to some of the changes in the culture.

Texas’ bill and others like it are generally bipartisan. The bills are passing with large majorities and Republican and Democratic governors alike have signed them.

SHAHEEN: This is already done for other industries, but you literally go on online, and it, the form will pop up, and you just populate it, and like your name, your address, those types of things.

And the laws are working.

The company that owns PornHub says traffic to the website in Louisiana has dropped 80 percent since the law took effect.

PornHub has also exited three other states rather than comply with the age verification rule. It says the laws violate the First Amendment, put people’s privacy at risk, and ultimately harm children by pushing people to what they call less regulated sites.

PornHub and other websites have sued the states, but a court in Utah has already rejected one of the lawsuits.

SHAHEEN: We knew pretty much it would, there was going to be a lawsuit. So we drafted it in such a way in anticipation of these kinds of silly lawsuits. But we're, we're we're very well positioned to to win those.

Texas and most other states have obscenity laws informed by the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and Supreme Court precedent.

Basically, those allow the state or federal government to limit speech in public if it’s deemed obscene under community standards. But there’s a lot of controversy around what those community standards are—especially on the internet.

Will Creeley is the legal director at FIRE, a legal advocacy group specializing in First Amendment issues.

WILL CREELEY: Courts have been clear in decisions dating back about 20-plus years now that restricting adult access or putting barriers to adult access to protected speech, even if it's done in the name of protecting minors, raises serious constitutional questions.

If the government wants to limit speech based on its content, it must pass the strict scrutiny test. That involves two things. First, there must be a compelling government interest to restrict speech, and second, it must use the least restrictive means to do so.

Creeley says these laws likely put an undue burden on adults since parents could put safeguards on their children’s devices.

CREELEY: Different parents make different decisions. It's not the state's role to tell you what speech isn't isn't fit for your children.

In other words, Creeley believes laws like the ones in Texas and Louisiana are not the least restrictive means.

He also says governments need to prove that the way pornography harms children is a compelling government interest.

CREELEY: That's assuming that those studies are bulletproof and we can show that access to adult content for for children is basically equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes.

Others believe these laws should, and will, pass muster.

CHRIS MCKENNA: Chris McKenna. I'm the founder of Protect Young Eyes. Protect young eyes is an organization that helps families, schools and churches create safer digital spaces.

McKenna says there should be reasonable barriers to pornography so that children cannot do themselves harm. It’s one thing to tell a child not to walk into an adult entertainment store or a strip club—it’s another thing to keep them away from the dark edges of the internet.

MCKENNA: To simply say, based on millions of websites that have multiple access points, all through different devices, be it at a friend's house, be it at school, be it on social media, be it in all these different places, are you telling me that parents have the sole responsibility to control all of those digital doorways to this content?

In addition to unanticipated access points, pornography often has unanticipated effects that aren’t limited to a child’s mental health.

MCKENNA: Because neurologically due to mirror neurons and other developmental, what are supposed to be benefits to children being able to mimic the world around them, they find that when children see porn, they practice porn on other children.

There are a slew of studies showing that viewing pornography can normalize deviant sexual behaviors in adults—even more so in children.

In other words, McKenna believes that there is a compelling government interest and that the burden placed on adult users is worth it. After all, it’s a similar burden placed on buying alcohol or tobacco online.

The problem with porn goes much further; it’s something that state laws alone can’t fix. Biblical counselor Deepak Reju says that while these laws are a good start, the church has much more to do.

REJU: You use a law to cut off access, say all those folks who are already addicted. All you've done is encased a sexually crazed heart. And if you put a wall around a sexually crazed heart, that just shows ultimately the issue is not behavior, but the Lord transforming the heart. So laws are good. They're a great step, but they're not the answer to the problem.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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