Lonely and stressed out: the porn industry is praying on people’s mental health struggles to grow during the pandemic
New research on porn consumption shows a dramatic increase related to social isolation measures. As if things aren’t bad enough right now.
A group of Italian researchers looked at global trends on porn consumption during the pandemic and found evidence that porn usage has increased most in the countries that were most affected by COVID-19. The research, published on November 28, analyses search trends on Google and at major porn websites for keywords that include, among other things, coronavirus-themed pornography. Yes, that’s really a thing. You can read the full article on Nature’s website.
Here are some highlights from the article:
Today, it has been considered that 46–74% of men and 16–41% of women are active pornography users in modern nations. These data are supported by one of the most popular porn websites, PornHub, as reported over 39 billion searches and 42 billion visits during 2019, suggesting 115 million visits and 18,073 terabytes of data transferred per day.
Aside from the sexual arousal and enhancement, coping and boredom are linked with greater use of pornography as well. Studies showed that higher levels of psychological distress often end up with greater levels of pornography consumption.
The research trend of almost every keyword increased with significant inflection points for those nations with straight “stay at home orders” (China, Italy, Spain, and France).
A sharp increase in porn searches was seen in nations where coronavirus is widespread. One of the most popular porn websites reported that their traffic has steadily increased in March as the pandemic has spread, which confirms our findings. Interestingly, there was no different WRSV in nations like the USA and Sweden, where regulations were never as restrictive as the ones adopted in Italy, Spain, and France.
The interest in coronavirus-themed porn has also increased during this pandemic in all nations. In March 2020, more than 1.8 million coronavirus searches have appeared on Pornhub. Coronavirus-themed porn mostly includes sex with masks, surgical gloves, and hazmat suits. The reason behind the search of this kind may be related to people’s constant need for sexual novelty and humans’ ability to fetishize virtually everything.
But are the porn companies really to blame for this situation?
Are people spontaneously looking more for porn or is the industry actively encouraging them through advertising and other practices? Let’s take a look.
You may remember Pornhub’s ad campaign to “save the TaTas”, raising funds for breast cancer awareness not for the benefit of the women suffering from the disease, but for the men who hyper sexualize their bodies. Yep, they’ve managed to sexually exploit breast cancer while making a PR stunt to portray themselves as a “feminist” company. Pornhub is owned by MindGeek, a huge porn conglomerate with a revenue of nearly half a billion dollars.
And now they’re at it again. During the pandemic, they’ve made Pornhub’s premium accounts free for everyone in several countries, supposedly to encourage people to stay home. Never mind their drug dealer strategy of giving away the product for free to hook people up, of course Pornhub has the best intentions in mind and worries first about the people’s well being and not at all about increasing their already huge profits. After all, porn is harmless fun, right?
Well, not for the women living with men who are porn consumers, or children being exposed to pornography at early ages at home and on the web. The pandemic is already taking a toll on people’s mental health, especially on those responsible for reproductive labor at home. The last thing we need is another public health emergency in the form of a porn epidemic.
