This article is not meant to serve as, or replace, professional legal advice. I am not an attorney, and this material is intended for educational purposes only. It is not legal advice in any way.
First, I want to make sure it's clear that this site is about avoiding pornography, regardless of whether or not it's legal. I'd encourage you to also visit our page on how to stop using porn for help quitting.
But the question I want to answer here is pretty simple.
Is it legal to watch porn?
The Simple Answer
In most cases, yes. It is completely legal to view and/or possess pornographic material.
To be clear, I'm basing this on this broad definition of pornography.
The distinctions between "soft core" and "hard core" porn can get very subjective, and difficult to decipher in a legal context. But let's just take your garden variety pornographic media and assume that's the subject.
It's completely legal to view it.
However, there are exceptions.
Illegal Exceptions
Again, the type and form of pornography is sometimes not particularly clear. And this makes the following laws very difficult for courts and justice systems to handle, because they are somewhat subjective.
But again, let's assume the basics. This is a generality and not specific legal advice for any one area or situation.
Here are the forms of pornography that are usually illegal to produce and/or possess:
- Child pornography: Any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving minors (individuals under the age of 18) is illegal.
- Obscenity: The Miller test, established by the Supreme Court in the case of Miller v. California, provides guidelines to determine if something is obscene.
- Non-consensual pornography: Also known as "revenge porn" this involves the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos without the consent of the individuals depicted.
- Bestiality: The depiction of sexual acts involving animals is generally considered illegal under state laws.
Read more: Obscenity Laws
Distributing, Possessing, or Viewing
Again, this is not legal advice, so please view all of this as general information for educational purposes only.
If the illegal forms of pornography are being produced, distributed and possessed/viewed, it's usually the producers and distributors that are targeted and prosecuted.
The "end user" so to speak, the one viewing the material online, is usually not going to take the fall for the material, simply because law enforcement doesn't have enough resources to go after everyone that watches illegal pornography
However, it also depends a lot on the type of illegal pornography:
- Child pornography: Even viewing or possessing is illegal
- Obscenity: Generally not illegal to view or possess
- Non-consensual: Sometimes viewing and possessing is illegal
Again, this all varies depending on where you live. But the safest bet? Don't view any of this type of pornography.
Better yet, don't view pornography at all.
Help with Quitting Porn
In fact, if you need help quitting pornography, that's what I built this site for.
You can checkout our porn blocking software recommendations here, or just jump to our top two options below.
Need help stopping? Here are the best porn blocking services for 2023.
Covenant Eyes Software and NordLayer DNS Filtering: Covenant Eyes provides accountability software that covers URLs and images, as well as blocking options, and lots of resources for helping you quit porn.
NordLayer allows you to implement network-wide filtering, and is a much more comprehensive blocking option, with added security measures and more extensive configuration options. It's effective for both homes and businesses.
