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Can Online Activity Be Regulated? Evidence from Adult Websites
Matthew Brown,
Emily J. Davis
& Devin G. Pope
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Working Paper 35322
DOI 10.3386/w35322
Issue Date June 2026
The consequences of online regulations depend on the extent to which users can circumvent restrictions or substitute toward noncompliant platforms. Since 2023, 25 U.S. states have implemented age verification laws that caused prominent adult websites (including Pornhub) to restrict local access for all users. We study how these restrictions affected browsing activity using individual-level panel data. Access restrictions reduced overall time spent on adult sites by roughly 10%. Specifically, for every 100 hours spent on top adult sites before restrictions, about 50 hours remained accessible at noncompliant sites that never restricted access, 30 hours persisted through VPN-based circumvention, 10 hours were substituted from compliant sites to noncompliant sites, and 10 hours were no longer spent on adult sites.
Acknowledgements and Disclosures
We thank seminar participants at UC Los Angeles and UC Santa Barbara for their comments and suggestions. Kasey Buckles, Matthew Gentzkow, and Aaron Leonard provided helpful feedback. We thank Hannah Lybbert for outstanding research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Kenneth C. Griffin Applied Economics Incubator. Davis is grateful for financial support from the Institute for Humane Studies Expense Support Grant and the American Institute for Boys and Men’s Graduate Student Fellowship. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Matthew Brown, Emily J. Davis, and Devin G. Pope, "Can Online Activity Be Regulated? Evidence from Adult Websites," NBER Working Paper 35322 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35322.
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