Editor’s note: We endeavor to bring you the top voices on current events representing a range of perspectives. Below is a column arguing that the federal government should intervene and regulate the porn industry. You can find a counterpoint here, where Satya Marar of Reason argues that the regulation of porn is a danger to our First Amendment freedoms.
Human trafficking is created by demand.
Basic economics says that supply meets demand. The USA leads the world in demand and is the number one nation commercializing sex with children, due to objectifying people (mostly women and girls, but also men and boys) and sexual exploitation through images and videos.
Often, the performers in porn videos are trafficking victims performing under the threat of force, fraud or coercion. In the case where they are minors, they are victims regardless whether force, fraud or coercion can be proven. Porn creates direct demand to objectify women, desensitize youth and drive up demand for financial gain at the expense of people.
Porn today educates our children on what sex is and creates an unhealthy image of women and the purpose of sex. The average age of exposure to pornography today is around 8 years old. This is often our children’s first exposure to sex, and it is not a healthy one.
It is one manufactured for entertainment and money. Talk to nearly any victim of human trafficking, and you will hear how they were groomed and educated through porn and forced to perform it. The Comprehensive Sex Ed curriculum “CSE,” co-funded by Planned Parenthood and taught in many states, is wrapped in an explicitly illustrated manual titled “It’s Perfectly Normal” aimed at ten-year-olds. The illustrations and content aims to desensitize our children to sex and sexual agendas with imagery that is soft porn at the least.
Pornhub is one of the largest hosts of online porn content, and it is rife with the abuse of minors, revenge porn and features many trafficking victims. You can learn more about that at www.traffickinghub.com.
Porn is also a drug and, like other drugs, it creates new neural pathways in the brain. Sex is a primal factor in every human, and the brain naturally will choose the neural pathway and transfer information to what is most desired. High doses of porn consumes these neural pathways in the brain and at times creates lasting affects, shrinking and shutting down areas of activity.
Of course, consuming porn does not just harm the individual but our culture as well. According to one study, the divorce rate doubled for men and tripled for women when one spouse began wathcing porn.
Porn also promotes sexual violence because what the individual sees in porn they want to replicate in reality. As porn is “entertainment,” it cannot be recreated to the effect it claims to portray. The addicting effect causes the consumer to need more violent and perverse content, which heightens the addiction and demand for more grotesque content. What cocaine is to the body, pornography is to soul. A fix that is never fully satisfied. Growing more desperate and dark by the day.
Simply said: Porn destroys. It is a downward spiral towards the abuse of another human being, too often the sexual abuse of a child. Many pedophiles, child molesters or sex traffickers are also addicted to porn. The common denominator in our social demise of morality is pornography.
It is time for us as a society to step in and regulate porn now. This being said, as a constitutionalist, I protect the First Amendment freedom of speech, and I do not propose that the federal government ban or regulate porn across the board.
However, as a society we must protect the children who are exposed to this. When we allow the altering of the neural pathways of eight-year-olds, placing them on a path to destruction, broken relationships, divorce and crime in the future, we must act. It is time for us to put federal pressure on the corporations that have created the platforms through which these images and videos are being delivered.
I propose that organizations like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Hollywood and porn sites like Pornhub be held accountable to self-regulate content and make sure it does not get into the hands of children.
The law draws a line between 17 and 18-year-olds as it relates to sex trafficking. It is time we use that law and that line to put pressure on the corporations to protect the youth 17 and under from pornography.
60% of the world’s pornography content is manufactured, produced and distributed in the USA. There were 42 billion searches on Pornhub last year with “teen porn” being in the top seven searches. We have free pornographic material on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. They can hook a teenager with free porn and create a long-term consumer who will ultimately pay for content.
There are an average of 115 million visits to porn sites in the US every day. The average time spent on these sites is over 10 minutes, more time than any other drug, and it is absolutely destroying our culture.
The conclusion and my solution is in fact the federal government applying pressure through mechanisms that do not violate our constitutional rights on the corporations who allow pornography to be distributed freely and to the youth.
Historically, no known culture that has embraced sexual immorality has survived past one hundred years. This is what the USA did in the 60s and we’re paying for it dearly today. We are now in uncharted waters with the epidemic rise of porn use by minors, and we must act now to reverse the course.
Jaco Booyens, a native of South Africa and an American citizen, actively fights against child sex trafficking in the USA and globally, giving aid and linking with agencies such as the TSA, FBI, Police departments, CIA, ICE and Homeland Security SRT. Jaco also serves as a Fellow of the Falkirk Center at Liberty University and is the Founder and CEO of After Eden Pictures.