How Many People Watch Porn in 2024? A Deep Dive Into the Statistics
Porn sites attract more visitors each year than Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined. But how many of us are really watching porn in 2024? What are the latest trends? And what impacts could this unprecedented access be having? Let‘s explore the stats and data around pornography in 2024.
The Porn Industry in Numbers
First, the sheer size of the porn industry:
- There are an estimated 4 million pornographic websites comprising 4-5% of all websites.
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The top porn sites receive staggering amounts of traffic:
- Pornhub had over 42 billion visits in 2019 alone – 115 million visits per day.
- Xvideos sees over 100 million daily visits.
- XVideos attracts around 81 million visits daily.
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For perspective, this exceeds the traffic of other major sites:
- Amazon has approximately 2.5 billion monthly visits
- Netflix sees about 167 million visits per month
- Twitter attracts under 400 million monthly users
- The world‘s top porn sites combined receive over 5 billion visits per month. That‘s over 150 million every single day.
The United States is by far the biggest consumer of porn, followed by the UK and Canada. California produces two-thirds of all porn made in America.
Worldwide, the porn industry is now worth a staggering $97 billion.
Who‘s Watching Porn in 2024?
With porn so ubiquitous online, who exactly is watching it? While men still view more porn than women, the gender gap is narrowing.
- 70% of men aged 18-24 watch porn at least monthly.
- 26% of women aged 18-24 and 13% of women 25-34 view porn monthly.
- 17% of women aged 35-44 report monthly porn consumption.
Given the stigma around porn, particularly for women, these self-reported numbers likely underestimate actual viewing habits.
Traffic data gives more insight:
- Women make up around one quarter of visitors to popular porn tube sites.
- On Pornhub, women spend an average of 10 minutes and 10 seconds per visit – just one minute less than men.
- Female viewership tends to skew younger, but over 55% of Pornhub‘s female audience is aged 35 or over.
So while men remain the primary viewers, women make up a sizable and growing chunk of porn site visitors across all age groups.
Time Spent Watching Pornography
In addition to who is watching porn, data shows how much time is being spent:
- The average Pornhub visit lasts 10 minutes and 56 seconds.
- On XVideos, visits average over 11 minutes.
- Globally, internet users spend over 1 million years on Pornhub annually. Yes, really.
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Daily time spent:
- U.S. visitors spend 41 million hours per month watching porn.
- Worldwide, 5.5 billion hours are spent on Pornhub monthly.
- That‘s 169 hours watching porn every second.
For frequent porn consumers, the hours add up quickly.
- 5-10% of adults self-identify as having an addiction to porn.
- Over half of male college students report spending 5 or more hours per week watching porn.
As unlimited free porn has grown ubiquitous, through computers and mobile devices, heavy consumption has become commonplace.
Trends and Searches in Porn Viewing
What specific content are viewers searching for and streaming? Some interesting trends arise from search data:
- "Teen", "young", "barely legal" and related terms are consistently top searches. This points to a fixation on youthfulness.
- After "lesbian", the most searched category by women is "gangbang" porn.
- For both genders, "amateur" porn sees high volumes, likely due to a desire for authenticity.
- Taboo subjects like "stepmom" and "stepsister" porn rank highly, suggesting a push towards more extreme content.
- Violent/nonconsensual searches like "forced" and "punishment" porn still occur often, though banned by most sites.
While people have always been drawn to taboo subjects, the internet enables such desires to be readily explored and fulfilled. This can accelerate porn addictions.
Impacts of Pornography Use
What effects, if any, arise from frequent porn consumption? The research is still developing, but potential impacts include:
- Correlations between porn viewing and decreased relationship satisfaction. Marriages where one person watches porn heavily are twice as likely to end in divorce.
- Associations between high porn use and mental health issues like depression, anxiety, isolation and emotional numbness. This may be due to overstimulation of dopamine receptors.
- Erectile dysfunction and reduced libido, especially in younger men, labeled "porn-induced ED". This develops as real-life sex cannot compare to constant novel porn content.
- Potential escalation to more extreme material to maintain arousal, including non-consensual and illegal content.
- Studies linking exposure to sexually aggressive porn with increases in violence and aggression, particularly toward women.
However, moderation is key – occasional porn viewing shows little correlation with negative effects for most people. Like any pleasurable activity, compulsive use is where problems arise. More research is still needed to understand this complex issue.
The Future of Porn
Porn consumption will only increase as technology continues advancing. Virtual reality porn offers immersive experiences impossible with pre-recorded video. Internet speeds enable streaming at 4K and 60fps quality levels. Cam sites and custom clip platforms make porn more personalized than ever.
As the stigma around porn lessens generationally, and women become more empowered to seek out the content they desire, female viewership will likely keep rising. The ubiquity of internet-connected devices makes porn permanently accessible from an early age. Parental controls and better porn literacy are needed to balance this reality.
One thing is clear – with tens of billions of visits to porn sites monthly, and over 110 million daily consumers, pornography has cemented itself as an indelible part of the modern digital world.
