Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

Coming up the damaging effects of internet pornography on the minds of children.

It got easier and easier and easier to access harder and harder and harder types of porn.

I'd go to school and I'd be thinking, oh, you know, I can't wait to get home and watch

some porn. Yes, the porn industry remains big business worldwide, but is it time we kept it

from children? Are people going to get around it? Of course they are. But what we're saying

for young children who stumble across pornographic content, an age verification system will make it much harder.

I think that's a good thing.

Regulating pornography on the internet.

That's Business Daily from the BBC.

The global porn industry is estimated to be worth $100 billion these days.

According to one news outlet, porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter put together.

Some 8% of all internet downloads are porn-related.

It is big business, but the UK government at least is trying a rare experiment now to

restrict its spread.

Groundbreaking regulation will require adult sites to introduce effective age verification

web blocks, making sure that people under the age of 18 can't access it.

Claire Levens is policy director at Internet Matters, an advocacy group that represents UK parents,

and she's been lobbying for this new law. I asked how many children in Britain were now looking at porn sites.

Our research with 2,000 parents across the UK would suggest that of the parents that told

us their children were looking at pornography, the average age was 11.

Anecdotal evidence would suggest that once one child in a class sees it, every child will see

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