Children win: Supreme Court slaps down Big Porn — putting kids before profit

On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld Texas’ common-sense law requiring pornography websites to verify the ages of their users and confirm that they are not children. This monumental ruling is key to protecting children from the dangers of the pornography industry. The cost of early exposure to pornography is high, and children deserve better than to be subjected to the violence and degeneracy of this industry.

In the legal world, pornography has often been characterized as a question of “free speech.” Indeed, the very name of this court case was Paxton v. Free Speech Coalition, referring to the group that challenged Texas’ law mandating age verification.

This decision reinforces the important truth that the rights of children come before the desires of adults.

But the FSC doesn't advocate for heterodox campus speakers, whistleblower protections, or even the right to supposed “hate speech.” It's a porn lobby.

Porn is big business, and its target consumers are kids. How do we know? Because in the handful of states that have passed age verification laws, some porn platforms have withdrawn altogether, preferring to lose their customers who are 18 to 88 rather than their customers who are 8 to 18.

My nonprofit Them Before Us filed an amicus brief in the Paxton case. We argued that today's pornography — free, anonymous, unlimited, violent, and degrading — is particularly dangerous to children. The Supreme Court acknowledged that threat in its ruling.

“With the rise of the smartphone and instant streaming, many adolescents can now access vast libraries of video content — both benign and obscene — at almost any time and place,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court's opinion.

Our brief offered the justices a peek into what child or adolescent users might accidentally stumble upon if the FSC had prevailed. Hint: This isn't your uncle's Playboy.

We included a screenshot of the Pornhub homepage, the most popular internet porn site. To keep with decorum, we redacted/blocked 90% of the nine video thumbnails and much of the titles as well. The content may have been too shocking for adult justices, yet it is easily accessible to a 9-year-old. To make sure there was no confusion about the “violent, body-punishing, and cruel” portals that were just a click away, we listed the popular pornographic categories on which kids could click, including babysitter, bondage, cartoon, gang bang, hentai, old/young, rough sex, school, and step fantasy.

Free speech this is not.

We don't need to wonder whether or not kids are accessing this content. A decade ago, researchers found that the average age of first exposure to pornography was between 12 and 13. That was ten years ago, before the average age of first-time cell phone users dropped to 12 years old. Many kids can and do access pornography at a much younger age, and the average middle schooler has immediate, and often secret, access to endless hours of violent and disturbing sexual content.

Those in the so-called free speech camp have long argued that protecting children from adult material is the responsibility of parents, not the porn distributors themselves. But is that realistic, effective, or even possible in today's internet landscape?

As Justice Alito openly pondered during oral arguments, “Do you know a lot of parents who are more tech-savvy than their 15-year-old?”

Filtering and parental controls rarely offer sufficient protection. In addition, children who are already socially disadvantaged, such as those raised in single-parent homes, spend more time on screens than their peers, increasing the likelihood of coming across harmful content.

Research confirms what common sense tells us: Pornography is bad for kids.

Children who are exposed to pornography before the age of 12 are significantly more likely to engage in “problem sexualized behaviors” — including attempts at imitating the sex acts they have witnessed. In addition, pornography is addictive, triggering the same kind of brain reward that leads to gambling addiction and even hard drug abuse.

And if 35-year-old, fully formed brains are being rewired by pornography, how much more so 15-year-old brains that are still developing?

No. Porn is not a “free speech” issue. It is a child protection issue. And it's not something that parents can manage themselves.

It looks like the highest court agreed. States can and should be involved in creating obstacles between children and the sexual content that we know can harm them for life.

When adults put children first, good policy results. This decision reinforces the important truth that the rights of children come before the desires of adults. This ruling not only upholds Texas’ law protecting children online but also paves the way for other states’ laws to hold the pornography industry accountable for harming children online.