There is a push to put a new wall up around porn sites — but experts say such a step could actually make a big problem worse.

Source: NEWS AU

A plan for age verification on online porn sites is no “silver bullet” and may even expose young people to child pornography on the dark web, Australians have been warned. The federal government has committed “in principle” to implementing age verification on porn sites, but experts say the prevalence of virtual private networks – already allowing access to illegal music streaming services – would easily enable children to bypass the measure.

The average age of first exposure to porn in Australia is 10 years old, while a 2017 study found 80 per cent of Australian men viewed explicit online material weekly. RMIT cyber expert Matt Warren warned a poorly thought-out response could see children drawn to the dark web – an unregulated section of the internet that was “relatively easy” to access – exposing them to more harmful material like child porn.

“Society norms wouldn’t apply there because they’re not regulated or policed,” he said. “If people go on the dark web to look for pornography, they may be drawn into other areas as well in terms of drugs.” Cyber expert Susan McLean said most young children would not seek out the dark web for porn, though some addicts might.

She said the “best protective factor is a parent being switched-on” and aware of their child’s internet use, but that approach had limits. “You can do everything right at home … (but) the problem is when the child goes to school, (or) goes for sleepover, and ends up with a kid or a family that don’t care,” she said.

Ms McLean called for strengthened age verification measures as part of a “co-ordinated, multifaceted” approach to the issue. “We need to go into it with our eyes open. We absolutely need to do more than tick a box, but it has to be backed up with education. We need support for parents, we need education for parents,” she said.

“On its own, it’s not going to work.” Ms McLean also argued it would be impossible to force overseas-based companies to comply with Australian laws, which would be “useless unless it could be enforced”.

“Porn sites are not pillars of society, so they’re really not going to care … They’ll just tell the government to take a flying leap,” she said. Melinda Tankard Reist from Collective Shout, an advocacy group against the sexualisation of women, said age verification would reduce the number of children accessing porn.

She conceded no proposal was a “silver bullet” but said “right now, we’ve got nothing”. “We can’t stop every 15-year old buying a beer, either … It doesn’t mean we say: let’s not do anything, let’s just allow the porn industry total access to children,” she said.

She said “the jury was no longer out” on porn, with schools reporting an increase in children “acting out sexually on other children in ways never before seen”. “This is a giant experiment … and then we wonder why there is such low rates of respect, why there’s so much mistreatment of women.”

A spokesman for Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government recognised technological solutions alone would not stop all children accessing explicit material. “Any approach to preventing exposure to harm online needs to include parental engagement and education in order for it to be a long-term solution,” he said.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has been tasked with leading an 18-month review into possible models for age verification. She said roughly half of Australians did not understand how online porn worked, despite parents listing it as one of their top online safety concerns.

“The last thing anyone wants is for this material, which is becoming increasingly violent and degrading towards women, or the less dominant intimate partner, becoming the de facto sex education tool for a generation of children,” she said.

Ms Tankard Reist said the measure was long overdue, urging the government against allowing the review to “go on forever” as children continued to access violent sexual material. “We’ll take what we can get … (but) we would hate to see (responses to the review) go beyond 18 months, because so much damage has already happened,” she said.