Britain's pornography crackdown has sent the number of visitors to the most popular adult sites tumbling.
Pornhub, the UK's most popular adult site, says the number of UK visitors to its website has plummeted by 77 per cent compared with July.
That month, Britain's Online Safety Act ushered in some of the world's most restrictive rules on accessing online pornography.
Since July 25, visitors to adult sites have had to verify that they are over 18 either by providing credit card details, uploading a picture of their ID, or using a selfie to estimate their age.
These rules, intended to make it harder for under–18s to see explicit material, have seen huge reductions in the number of Britons accessing pornography.
Mark Jones, a Partner at Payne Hicks Beach, called the 77 per cent decline in visitors 'dramatic'.
'Today's news that Pornhub has seen a 77% decline in UK traffic since July, coinciding with the enforcement of age–verification procedures as part of the Online Safety Act (OSA), is a dramatic figure,' he said.
'While this figure is not completely understood and might be attributed to a number of factors, anything that protects children in the online environment from harmful content is welcome news.'
The Online Safety Act requires the operators of online platforms to prevent children from viewing 'harmful content'.
That includes explicit content, like pornography, but also content that encourages self–harm or suicide, promotes dangerous challenges, shows serious violence, or incites hatred against people.
Platforms found to be in breach of the act could face a range of punishments, including fines of £18 million or 10 per cent of global turnover.
In extreme cases, companies may be blocked from operating in the UK.
Porn providers have seven options to check their visitors are over–18 – photo–ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile–network operator (MNO) age checks, credit card checks, email–based age estimation, digital identity services and open banking.
The laws were created in response to what many consider to be an alarming rise in young children accessing disturbing or harmful content online.
A study conducted last year by the charity Internet Matters found that seven in 10 children aged nine to 13 said they had been exposed to harmful content online.
Children in this age group reported coming across hate speech (13 per cent), coming across mis/disinformation (15 per cent), and one in ten has seen violent content or content that promotes violence.
Similarly, Ofcom research has found that eight per cent of UK children aged eight to 14 visited a porn site at least once a month.
Professor Elena Martellozzo, Childlight's European hub director, called the drop in traffic to PornHub 'a big win for child protection'.
'For too long children have been just a click away from explicit material,' she said.
'Our latest data shows one in five children have seen sexual content they didn't want to in the past year, and there are concerns that repeated exposure can normalise harmful attitudes and shape young people’s understanding of relationships in worrying ways.
'This kind of practical, balanced prevention measure helps keep adult spaces for adults and helps protect young people from harm.
'Age checks aren’t about censorship, they’re about creating healthier, safer online spaces for children to grow up in.'
The new rules seem to be putting Brits off porn altogether, with a 56 per cent plunge in searches on Google, according to NymVPN.
