Texas Age Verification Bill Would Plaster Health Warnings On Porn Sites

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the bull-shit-pseudoscience dept

Just when we didn’t think the state of Texas could get any more wacko on tech policy, this latest bill really suggests otherwise. House Bill 1181 is an age verification measure that is similar to what we’ve seen in the state legislatures across other red U.S. states.

You have an age verification proposal that is similar to Louisiana Act 440 and Utah’s Senate Bill 287 – all porn sites with users from these states must have a government ID or a credit card in order to verify age in order to watch age-restricted content. But, the bill itself takes an extreme turn in the guise of protecting the general public’s health.

House Bill 1181, introduced by a team of anti-porn legislators, would require porn sites to post public health warnings from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission as if it were a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of wine. I briefly reviewed the bill and found it presented as if it were a measure to counter youth electronic cigarette usage through punitive means or to add a public health tinge to a crisis that isn’t necessarily related to public health or even a crisis in some circles. In fact, Texas – among other states – has always been at the center of the movement to make porn consumption a health crisis.

HB 1181 would issue public health warnings including claims that porn use “increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.” Claims that are included in the health warnings laid out by the bill suggest that porn use is “potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function.” Or, that exposure to porn “is associated with low self-esteem and body image eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses.” Note how they use the term “exposure” as if a person watching porn was exposed to a real disease.

Such warnings follow talking points laid out by resolutions passed by state legislatures classifying pornography as a public health crisis. In 2019, Governing interviewed GOP Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler – the first state lawmaker in the union to introduce model legislation recognizing pornography as a risk to public health. The model legislation is the brainchild of an anti-porn group, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and is by no means an original campaign to try and prohibit otherwise protected forms of speech.

In this report, Weiler lauded the center despite the fact that he was essentially signing onto a right-wing movement that’s been debunked legally and, importantly, scientifically. 

There is no such thing as porn addiction. The American Psychiatric Association and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) point out that pornography addiction isn’t an official diagnosis recognized by the major medical and scientific communities at large. Rather, any problem with pornography consumption can be attributed to compulsive sexual behavior or something similar to that. There is a clear difference between compulsion and addiction as determined by urge versus need. 

Neuroscientists Nicole Prause and Vaughn Steele have produced peer-reviewed studies on porn addiction. A study published in the journal Biological Psychology several years ago reaffirmed previous findings that porn and sex addiction are not real by any means.

“The statements on science effects are just false, they have never been shown,” said Prause in an email to me. She elaborated that the “science” referred to in House Bill 1181 is “completely fabricated.” “APA and WHO both rejected sex and pornography as addictions because they are not. The bill flies in the face of scientific consensus.” 

Michael McGrady is a journalist and commentator focusing on the tech side of the online porn business, among other things

Filed Under: hb 1181, health warnings, moral panic, porn, porn addiction, texas