Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jun 24, 2025
Date Accepted: Jul 13, 2026
“I think it's necessary, but…” Young people’s perspectives on age verification for online pornography in Australia: survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Australian Government has committed to a pilot trial of age verification for access to pornography and other online content (2024).
Objective:
To understand young people’s perspectives on age verification for access to online pornography.
Methods:
Cross-sectional online survey of young people aged 15-29 years in Victoria, Australia (n=794).
Results:
Most respondents (60.3%) supported mandatory age verification, but none of the four specific age verification methods proposed (identification document upload, facial scanning, credit card, parental monitoring) were seen as acceptable by a majority. Qualitative analysis of open-ended questions indicated that participants had considerable apprehensions related to user privacy and data security, potential adverse effects of blocking access to pornography on young people's sexual development, and doubts about the technology's overall effectiveness. Less regulatory strategies, such as comprehensive sexual health education, were discussed as more suitable and viable approaches.
Conclusions:
While many young people in this study were supportive of age verification as a concept, there were significant concerns about the feasibility and security of the process. It is vital to conduct further research on user apprehensions, potential negative impacts of age verification, and to explore more suitable and privacy-sensitive approaches before these policies are implemented.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.