Does banning a good or service substantially reduce its consumption? Or does it mainly drive the market underground or to substitute products?
Research on banning minors from adult websites suggests the latter. The researchers looked at
individual-level browsing data from approximately 550,000 US desktop and mobile internet users between 2022 and 2024. … [The] findings reveal that age-verification laws reduced overall time spent on adult websites, but these effects were muted by users circumventing blocks and switching to noncompliant websites.
Specifically,
[f]our to eight weeks after Pornhub blocked access, total time spent on adult websites fell by roughly 8 percent in the affected states. Pornhub use fell by 54 percent, meaning nearly half of prior use remained after the shutdown. This persistence suggests that users employed VPNs to continue accessing the site … [and] reflects widespread noncompliance and substitution.
Users shifted to
[o]ther large websites, including XVideos and XNXX, [which] remained available and received more traffic after Pornhub blocked access. … If users instead migrate to less compliant competitors, the regulation could shift activity toward platforms with fewer safeguards rather than substantially reducing exposure to harmful content.
Cross-posted from Substack.