Traffic to most popular porn sites plunges as age checks introduced

British visits to popular pornography sites have slumped following the introduction of strict age checks last month, according to new data.

- Dan Milmo

Daily visits to Pornhub, the UK's most used porn site, fell from 3.6m on 24 July, the day before age gating was introduced, to 1.9m on 8 August - a fall of 47%. The next most popular sites, XVideos and xHamster, saw visits fall 47% and 39% respectively over the same period, according to data from Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company.

The data, first reported by the Financial Times, appears to show the impact of strict age-checking rules from 25 July under the Online Safety Act. However, social media sites that also introduced age checks for material barred to under-18s, such as X and Reddit, did not experience dips in traffic over the same time.