Depending on exactly where you are in the world, you’re just on either side of the two-month mark as it pertains to the quarantine with COVID-19. If you’re here in the United States of America, you’re seeing a lot of cities and states stick their toe in the water as it pertains to reopening. I understand their desire, and it appears our collective efforts to minimize contact has really helped lower the first estimates of a death toll, but the curve has not started to continually go down anywhere.
It seems dangerous to reopen at this time and there are several instances from the last great pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918, that shows when you reopen or get together too early, bad things happen. For those who think crowded beaches are safe, do a little research about a parade in Philadelphia that spread the Spanish Flu. Just because you can open, doesn’t mean you should open and just because you can go out, doesn’t mean you should go out. Admit it, you’re loving this excuse to keep your hair growing out.
At the beginning of this pandemic, I wrote about how I thought it was obvious the online porn industry was going to explode and PornHub, which tracks and shares their analytics, especially when things are going well (despite pretending terms like “teen” and “incest” don’t exist in their searches) has been continually providing almost real-time data.
In an attempt to lure more viewers, the site took down its paywall for premium content – whatever that means – when COVID-19 first hit parts of Europe hard. When it went worldwide, so did their promotion. In the early days of their promotion, when many mainstream media outlets picked up what they thought was probably a funny story, the average PornHub traffic jumped by 20% to 30% depending upon which country you were talking about.
I followed up a few weeks later with the good news that those numbers seem to have dropped to the 9% to 12% level in most countries – still a huge jump in traffic considering you’re talking about one of the Top Three porn sites in the world and one of the Top Ten most popular websites in the world. That’s right, PornHub consistently gets more traffic than Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit and LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, as we’ve all settled in for the long haul on this, the numbers have rebounded. History has always shown spikes in porn use on the weekend – which plays to the idea when people are home and have nothing to do they’ll turn to online porn – and that trend also continues worldwide.
While the US topped out at around 25% above average in late March, it had dropped to 9%-12% a few weeks later. It’s come back though and in the last 10 days of April, the average weekday bump in traffic is around 14% and weekend traffic is 18%.
In Canada, the story is a little different. There was not as dramatic a drop off the highs (about 20%) so there has been no rebound. Through April, Canada has consistently shown a weekday bump in traffic of 11% and weekend traffic of 14%.
The UK is the opposite of Canada in that it fluctuates greatly from weekdays (now at about 12%) and weekends (now at 22%-23%). Those trends mirror most of Europe, which PornHub reports at about 14% on weekends and 20%-21% on weekdays.
The worst figures are probably out of Spain, which as far as I can tell, has the one-day surge record of 61% on March 17. These days, weekday or weekend doesn’t seem to matter as they are regularly 25%-30%. Unsurprisingly, their neighbor Portugal is in a similar boat.
If you’re looking for a country with good news, Australia is dipping well below 10% on weekdays and has never gone over 18% on any day during the quarantine. France, which spiked into the 30s, has now settled to less than half of that, even on weekends.
I haven’t seen any statistics of what other websites are looking like, although I’m guessing that things like Facebook and Instagram are seeing much more traffic than usual. I’m not sure if that would count if it goes through an app, though. They don’t consult me on these things.
Unfortunately, the latest comprehensive website stats I can find are dated March 1. I’ve made a record of these and when new statistics come out for all of March and forward, I’ll try to make sure to bring them to you. If PornHub has seen this surge, we’ll be able to judge how the other porn sites in the top 25 websites have gone up or down.
And for those wondering the big deal, some figures can be extrapolated. For instance, we know that roughly 1-in-3 men between 18 and 30 believe they have an issue with porn. So, if 10% more men in that age group are looking at porn, it seems to me that one-third would now be at risk for an issue whereas they might not have before. Yes, somewhat unscientific, but you can’t tell me that extended use of porn over weeks and now months won’t result in higher numbers of addicts than before.
I’ll keep everyone updated on what’s happening as more statistics come in. Cross your fingers for good news. We can certainly use some these days.
Obviously numbers aren’t going to be available on this, but I wonder how much of the increased traffic is from people who are now not working and therefore have more time on their hands, and how much is from people who are still working.
One of PornHub’s blips that they don’t like to talk about is the “after school” bump that they get between 3 and 5 in most places. I’m guessing there will be a bump between 9 and 5 that may indicate that a lot of the people watching are now out of work. We just won’t see that bump unless they reveal deeper analytics, which they haven’t in a month, so we may have to wait until the end of the year. I have a feeling they’ll probably do some kind of deeper release soon. I’m curious about the changes in female viewing, which was way, way up compared to normal.
Fascinating.
Seems to me the long term affects of the porn virus will be more damaging than the one from Wuhan. Sad news.
I believe you are 100% correct.
Anecdotally, this past weekend my firm supercharged their internet content screening software. Evidently there were too many folks surfing porn on their take-home laptops. Now the settings are so high that I can’t access my own blog or many of those I follow. 😩
That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of this angle. How did they inform people it wasn’t cool?
If you try to go to a blocked page or site you are met with a big red hand symbol and something like “PORN!!!” or “FIREARMS!!!” or “DRUG PARAPHERNALIA !!!” in giant red font, coupled with an appropriately lawyer-esque warning and direction to review the firm’s internet usage policies. There’s no advance warning. Just… SURPRISE!!
Hahaha. So how are you buying your bullets and crack pipes these days?
Apparently on the down low from now on… 😂
Sigh…
I think we should look at this and see what we are doing with our lives.
Look at this:
Thank you for this. I saw a stat a while ago that said 80% of the porn involving underage people was now made by underage people. This can’t be the norm.
One of the reasons why I left the education system and decided to return now is because schools and teachers aren’t aware of children’s reality. Of course, education starts at home, but at school, we have to provide students also the right establishment which allows them to flourish as an individual.
I am thirty-five years old, and I am facing the challenges of all this technological world when it comes to relationships in general. So now, I wonder, what will happen with these children in the future?
We are creating a world of avoidants!
When you say you’re facing challenge in the technological world when it comes to relationships in general, are you talking online dating?
I think that we need to HOPE that education starts at home but we need to ENSURE that it happen in school. Some kids may learn lessons twice, which isn’t a bad thing, but we need to make sure that they learn them at least once. Thank you for returning to the system.
Dear Joshua,
I am talking about relationships in general because of distraction, but if we are going to talk about the online dating scene, it can a mess for people who knows what they want. A large portion of the population there has avoidant attachment style.
People with avoidant attachment are the ones who can develop an addiction to pornography, for example. Also, they have an addiction to the initial phase of dating, and the rush of hormones (dopamine) which we can call love bombing.
I am glad to comeback to the system 🙂
Thank you, and have a pleasant day! 😉
I wish I could enlarge the numbers photo on my PC.
When this whole thing started, I thought people would flood social media (blogging). Surprisingly, those whom I spoke to , said they didn’t feel inspired to write. It seemed to me as if traffic on WP dropped. It would be interesting to actually see the numbers.
According to Pornhub.com’s numbers, on weekdays, visits to their site are up about 10-12% over last year at this time and on weekends, it’s closer to 18% above last year. The real story, however is with their PornhubPremium.com site, which they offered free access to for a week during the early days of the pandemic. Traffic to that had doubled in two months — and that’s the real money-making part of their operation. Traffic is stagnant on most cam sites, but the site OnlyFans is growing exponentially.