SEAN RAMESWARAM (host): If you’re a youngster in America who wants to see a rated R movie, you’re probably gonna get carded. If you want to buy an adult magazine (if you can find an adult magazine anymore) you’re likely gonna get carded. You are definitely gonna get carded at the strip club. But for decades now, individuals of any age have been able to watch all the online porn they can get away with, which is totally twisted!

And now there are a bunch of laws being passed to change that.

<CLIP> STATE REP. LAURIE SCHLEGEL (R-LA): The pornography that is on the Internet today is not your daddy's Playboy. I even joke it's not the Hustler that people probably hid underneath their bed. This is really hardcore pornography and it's just freely accessible to children. And so we know it's harming them. And now as a legislature [sic], I can do something about it and I did.

SEAN: Getting carded for online porn, coming up on Today, Explained.

[THEME]

SCORING <Happier Than Ever - Billie Eilish>?

STATE REP. LAURIE SCHLEGEL (R-LA): So my name is Laurie Schlegel, and you can call me Laurie or you can call me Rep. Schlegel. I am a licensed professional counselor, so – and we treat people who are struggling with pornography. So it's obviously something I do on a daily basis. I have been a state representative for two years, and last year is when I actually filed the bill and I wasn't having any intention of doing anything like this out of the gate. But a whole bunch of things just sort of came together all at once to sort of make it possible. And what kind of tipped me over the edge was when I read an article of Billie Eilish and she had done an interview with Howard Stern, and she sort of disclosed to him how she'd been watching pornography since the age of 11 –

<CLIP> SINGER BILLIE EILISH: I think it really destroyed my brain. And, um, I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn. I think that I had, like, sleep paralysis and these, like, almost night terrors slash nightmares because of it.?

REP. SCHLEGEL: And I just thought how courageous that was of someone of her stature and a female to obviously be having this conversation with Howard Stern. And I just thought, this is a real problem. It’s really harming our children. And we have to do something about it.?

SCORING UP + OUT?

SEAN: You’re listening to Today, Explained. I’m Sean Rameswaram. Representative Schlegel and likeminded lawmakers are trying to protect kids from harmful content online. There’s been six state laws passed so far this year to that end. Natasha Singer at The New York Times has been writing about them.

NATASHA SINGER (New York Times reporter): So we're sort of seeing a growth of different kinds of laws. The porn ones require you to verify your age in order for you to view porn sites like Pornhub. The first one was passed by Louisiana:?

<CLIP> KNTV: The law, known as Act 440, went into effect on January 1st and aims to shield minors from harmful material.

NATASHA: Then last year, California passed a different kind of law. It's called the Children's Age-Appropriate Design Code.?

<CLIP> NBC: The bill would require app makers to create default protections for children. So for instance, on a social media app, the ability for strangers to contact you would be turned off.?

NATASHA: And then the third kind of law we're seeing are the social media age restriction bills. We saw Utah pass one in March and then Arkansas passed one in April. And those not only require social media sites to check somebody's age and make sure they're an adult, they require parental consent for young people to have a social media account. But they go even further, which is:?

<CLIP> CBS: Under the law, companies must give parents access to children’s accounts, there’s a social-media curfew from 10:30pm to 6:30 am, and there must be an age-verification system for all Utah residents who use social media.?

NATASHA: So we're seeing, really, this wave of restrictions, starting with porn, growing to a much bigger set of platforms.

SEAN: And as far as I know, Internet porn has been around for a minute now. Where is all of this coming from??

NATASHA: You know, I think that legislators, both state and federal, and parents and schools and everyone else right now are concerned about young people online.?

SCORING <My, That Does Sound Serious>?

<CLIP> SURGEON GENERAL VIVEK MURTHY: Many of the algorithms on social media and more broadly on the web will direct kids often towards content that may not be helpful and in fact may actively be harmful to their mental health and well-being.?

NATASHA: And I think the concern about porn is a subset of the general malaise and feeling that the Internet either causes mental health issues or exacerbates mental health issues in adolescents.

<CLIP> UTAH GOVERNOR SPENCER COX: As leaders and parents, we have a responsibility to protect our young people.?

NATASHA: Also, if you're a state legislator and you're trying to crack down on Big Tech, it's much easier to start with something that everybody seems to be able to be?– agree on, like, ‘Porn is bad for young people.’ And then you can graduate to, ‘Oh, we have a paradigm, we have age verification for porn. We can also have age verification for social media because that can also pose risks.’ Right? It's a slippery slope.

SEAN: There's a lot here to unpack, but let's just begin with enforcement, because one of the things you mentioned was that, you know, kids are going to have to punch in their age before using certain social media apps, maybe certain porn sites, whatever it might be. But obviously, it's really easy to lie.?

SCORING OUT

SEAN: Whenever something asks me for my zip code, I don't want to be tracked, so I just put in 90210.

<CLIP> “90210” THEME?

NATASHA: Right. And I lie when they ask me what my age is most of the time because I'm a privacy reporter…??

SEAN: <laughs>?

NATASHA: … and I don't want companies to know; it's none of their business, right??

SEAN: <laughs>?

NATASHA: So but the thing is that these laws require much more than what companies do now, which is ask you to volunteer your age. Because we know there are millions of kids on social media sites who've put in fake birthdays, who have been 12 and made themselves 21.?

<CLIP> “SUPERBAD”, EVAN: McLovin? What kind of a stupid name is that, Fogel? What are you, trying to be an Irish R&B singer???

NATASHA: What these things require, for example, with the porn, is that you have to use a third-party I.D. like your driver's license.?

SEAN: Aha!?

NATASHA: They don't let you just say whatever age you want to be.?

SCORING <Ice Skating in a Hurricane>?

REP. SCHLEGEL: So we have a thing called L.A. Wallet. It is our digitalized ID and it was created, you know, years ago. But during the pandemic, our court systems utilized it to help identify, you know, people who were coming in and doing online court. And so I went to research to see: is the technology available where you can just give somebody’s coarse age, not give any kind of identifying information, but just telling like this person's over 18, sort of let them in? And I found out, yes, the technology is available where you can protect someone's privacy and also, you know, protect children at the same time.

NATASHA: I think that Louisiana is unique. And that's because Louisiana already had a digital driver's license system in place and an app where you could upload your driver's license and get a certified digital copy. And I think about a third of people, drivers in Louisiana were using this app before the porn law was passed. So unlike other states that have passed this law that do not have such an app in place, you know, when Louisiana passed this law, they knew they had a system that porn sites would be able to use to verify. And the way the verification works is you go to the site and you are given a code to plug into your app. And the app will verify that it's you and that you are over 18 or not. And then the app sends a message to the porn site saying this user is over 18 or under 18. It doesn't show your driver's license to the porn site. It doesn't tell them your name, your birthday, anything else. And so you have seen tens of thousands of people in Louisiana start using this app…?

SEAN: Hm.

NATASHA: … since the law went into place. So some people may be using a VPN, but it seems like a lot of people are also complying. On the other hand, Pornhub and the sites owned by that company are complying, but many other porn sites are not complying.?

SCORING OUT?

SEAN: Huh!

NATASHA: So it creates a system where the sites that are complying feel like they're being punished because many sites are not complying with the law.