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One of the strongest and most thorough critics of the statistic is activist Emi Koyama. Koyama says that even when applied only to underage subjects, the stat doesn't hold up, which does a disservice to the most vulnerable in our society.

"It conceals the reality that most of the young people in the sex trade come from families affected by poverty, racism, abuse (including homophobia and transphobia in families), parental imprisonment or deportation, or from broken child welfare systems, and do not have safe places to return to," she told me in an interview. "In fact, many young people are trading sex as a way to escape from violence and abuse that they have experienced in their homes and child welfare systems. By treating them as innocent and helpless 'children,' we fail to listen to the young people who are struggling to survive in hostile circumstances. We also fail to address the root causes of their vulnerability, and instead promote further surveillance and criminalization of street culture—which actually harms young people who survive there."

Even by mathematical standards, the numbers don't add up. In order for 12 or 13 to represent the national average age of entry, there would need to be a significant number who enter at ages younger than that. "The vast majority of young people who are 'rescued' by the law enforcement during Operation Cross Country sweeps are 16- and 17-year olds," Koyama says, "and there are rarely any under the age 13... For the average age to be around 13, there needs to be many more 5-12 year olds that are forced into prostitution than are empirically plausible." If the massive numbers of children exist in quantities enough to offset those who enter in their late teens or as adults, they’re not showing up in the arrests made by the Federal government, even high-profile ones like Operation Cross Country.

In addition, Koyama says, the age of entry statistic flatters Americans that their own communities are safe, while playing on the fear of outsiders: "It gives the impression that children were safe until 'bad people' came into their communities to take them away, and therefore we must arrest and prosecute these 'bad people' (often racialized)."

Researcher and activist Melissa Ditmore agrees with Koyama that the statistic is invalid: "This has been debunked but no one will let go of it," she says. "They used to say 13, now they say 12. If that's the average age, we'd see people younger than that in the business, and I have not ever met pre-adolescent children selling sex."

But the biggest problem with the claim is that it automatically remakes any discussion about sex work into its own image. When you start the conversation believing that prostitution is rooted in the rape of children, any suggestion that sex workers can be adults who have made an economic choice sounds like an attempt to provide cover for the rapists.