Troubling 2025 Year-End Reports from the Sexual Exploitation Industry
As 2025 drew to a close, year-end reports from the commercial sex industry were announced. While there is some good news about the potential effectiveness of age verification policies to substantially suppress use of specific pornography websites, the reports from the industry present a trouble picture of its massive scope and relentless growth.
More than a decade ago, it was estimated that about 30% of all data transmitted across the internet was pornography. While there is no way to precisely count the number of pornography websites in existence, the number is almost certainly in the millions. And the problem is far worse than that, since pornography is transmitted by means other than dedicated websites, such as via texting and trading among members of social media networks.
Pornhub, remained the world’s largest single source of online pornography, with 858 million unique monthly visitors and billions of visits every month. That figure positioned it as the eighth most visited website in the world. OnlyFans, a website whose content includes live, interactive “performances” that represent elements of both pornography and prostitution, reported $7.2 billion in revenue for 2025, up from $6.6 Billion in 2024. In its year end report, Atlanta ranked #1 globally in per-capita spending on OnlyFans, eclipsing every city in the U.S. and abroad, contributing over $26 million to the revenue of just that one website.
Among the numerous harms of such widespread access to pornography is the normalization of sex as commerce. Onlyfans is built on a business model of “creator” driven content, and young people are drawn by the prospect of what is seen as a way to quickly generate great income. Over 4 million accounts have been created, and while the average monthly income is only about $200, a small number of highly visible individuals earn more than $1million per year.
Other evidence indicates that selling sex or sexual images is far more normalized than we would like to believe. Surveys of adolescents suggest that sex trafficking of minors occurs essentially everywhere in the U.S. For example, a national survey with a representative sample of over 13,000 youth examined the prevalence and correlates of exchanging sex for drugs or money and found that 3.5 percent of adolescents had engaged in transactional sex that could be defined as sex trafficking of minors (Edwards et al., 2006). Another national survey conducted 19 years later (in 2025) found more than 14 percent of teens to have engaged in a “commodified sexual exchange” before the age of 18, sharing sexually explicit imagery of themselves for money or other valuable items such as gift cards, clothing, or gaming currency. Another survey conducted in 14 U.S. cities included both adolescents and young adults, with a mean age of 21, and found that over 16 percent had ever exchanged sex for drugs, money, or something else of value (Boyer et al., 2017).
From these studies and other evidence, one must conclude that virtually every community in the United States has had commercial sex activity involving minors, meeting the legal definition of sex trafficking of minors. With 21 percent of the U.S. population under the age of 18, and 17 percent of that population reporting that they have experienced commercial sexual exploitation, any community with a population over 35 is likely to contain a minor who has been sexually exploited for money.
Opposing such powerful forces that generate such widespread harm is no small task, and requires action on a number of fronts, including investigating and punishing sex traffickers and those profiting from child sexual abuse materials and pornography created without consent.
For those of us opposing the sex trade, there is some good news from the United Kingdom, where it was found that implementing an age verification law was followed by a substantial drop in viewing. In the UK, with a population of just 69 million, there had been an average of about 10 million visitors per month to just one pornography website alone (Pornhub). The reported number of unique visitors to Pornhub was 7.2 million in November, 2025, a decline of 36% since August 2024. Visits to Xvideos and Chaturbate – the next two biggest sites – fell by 27% and 18% respectively over the same period.
A 2025 study in the United States by Lang and colleagues confirms the causal connection between the implementation of the verification law and reductions in pornography consumption onserved in the U.K. The research conducted across 19 states with age verification laws found a 46.6% reduction in searches for the dominant platforms that comply with the legal requirements.
While this is encouraging, there is evidence that pornography consumers may be working around the age restriction in a number of ways. For example, since the UK law was passed, the usage of VPN (Virtual Private Networks, which provide users anonymity by obscuring their individual devices and accounts) nearly doubled. Consumers may also simply switch to other websites that do not restrict access. The U.S. study also found that after passage of verification laws, there were significant increases in searches for both the dominant non-compliant platform (48.1%) and for VPN services (34.2%).
Also, age verification is only as effective as its enforcement, and poor implementation limits potential effectiveness. Investigation of Ohio’s age verification law found that the majority of pornography websites are simply non-compliant, and accessible to anyone without any attempt to verify that they are adults.
In addition, even when they are implemented and providers are compliant with the law, the age verification procedures can often be easily defeated. For example, on some websites, such as Pornhub, the verification procedure involves nothing more than checking a box stating that the user is at least 18 years of age, and access is then granted without any validation of that answer.
There is no question that age verification is a necessary step to limit (and eventually end) children’s access to pornography, and that implementing new laws change the behavior of consumers in the intended direction. But to be truly effective, the pressure must continue long after the passage of age verification laws. Regulatory and law enforcement agencies must monitor compliance and enforce the laws when pornographers fail to implement age verification procedures, and to develop better procedures that require validation of claims of consumer age. Technology experts and legislators must also seek to close loopholes in laws that allow access to pornography via anonymous portals.
