The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on pornography habits: a global analysis of Google Trends

Abstract

As the COVID-19 spread globally, social distancing, self-isolation/quarantine, and national lockdowns have become crucial to control the pandemic. However, these measures may also lead to increases in social isolation, loneliness, and stress, which can alter the consumption of pornography habits. The aim of the study was thus to explore the interest pattern in pornography and coronavirus-themed pornography during the COVID-19 outbreak. Google Trends® was employed to determine the most popular porn websites (Porn, XNXX, PornHub, xVideos, and xHamster), and coronavirus-themed pornography worldwide and in six nations with different COVID-19 outbreak and self-isolation recommendations. We analyzed every search trend on Google® from January 9, 2020 to May 25, 2020 using "joint point regression analysis". Comparisons of week relative search volume (WRSV) and temporal patterns were analyzed to assess the change of interest in search terms during nations lockdowns. Paired t-test was used to compare WRSV values among the porn websites during the national lockdowns and the equivalent timespan of the weeks in the previous 4 years. The research trend of almost every keyword increased with significant inflection points for those nations with a straight "stay at home orders" (China, Italy, Spain, and France). "PornHub" and "Porn" showed the highest increase of interest worldwide with an average weekend percentage change (AWPC) of 4.9 and 3.8, respectively. The mean WRSV for keywords in USA and Sweden did not show a similar increase as the other nations. The WRSV percentage change with the historical data had a peak during the straight nations' lockdowns (p < 0.01). All the nations had a significant increase in WRSV coronavirus-themed pornography for each keyword (p < 0.01) with an AWPC, ranging worldwide between 18.5 and 61.8 (p < 0.01), after the beginning of selfquarantine. As strengths this study uses a big data technology to collect worldwide trend of interest, however, data are anonymous and do not allow analysis of subpopulation groups. In conclusion, we demonstrated an increased interest in pornography and coronavirus-themed pornography after the outbreak of COVID-19 in nations with a straight "stay at home orders".

Porndemic? A Longitudinal Study of Pornography Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Nationally Representative Sample of Americans

“…These increases in pornography use occurred in tandem with this same website offering a range of incentives for increased use. Similarly, analyses of internet search data suggested that interest in pornography peaked during the early stages of the pandemic (Zattoni et al, 2020). Collectively, this led to speculation in popular media (Grubbs, 2020) and peerreviewed journals (Király et al, 2020;Mestre-Bach et al, 2020;Sinclair et al, 2020) about the possibility for pornography use to increase over the course of the pandemic.…”

Internet and Pornography Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Presumed Impact and What Can Be Done

“…Pornhub has shared statistics on a regular basis revealing the changes and trends in the consumption of their content, showing a constantly positive deviation from average traffic on an average pre-pandemic day ( 42 ). A study employing Google Trends and joint point regression analysis demonstrated a significant rise (compared to last 4 years) in interest for pornographic websites in countries with “stay at home orders” ( 43 ).…”

Reliability of Google Trends: Analysis of the Limits and Potential of Web Infoveillance During COVID-19 Pandemic and for Future Research

“…in a fixed timelapse. In this regard, the quantitative analysis of relative search volumes of pre-selected queries was used for several purposes during COVID-19 pandemic: 1) predicting COVID-19 cases ( Ahmad et al, 2020 ; Ayyoubzadeh et al, 2020 ; Jimenez et al, 2020 ; Mavragani and Gkillas, 2020 ; Sulyok et al, 2020 ; Venkatesh and Gandhi, 2020 ; Prasanth et al, 2021 ), 2) studying the web interest in COVID-19 ( Effenberger et al, 2020 ; Hu et al, 2020 ; Rovetta and Castaldo, 2020 ; Springer et al, 2020 ), 3) studying the adoption of infodemic terms and related consequences ( Cinelli et al, 2020 ; Cuan-Baltazar et al, 2020 ; Rovetta and Bhagavathula, 2020 ), 4) studying a full range of users’ psychological-emotional responses ( Husnayain et al, 2020 ; Rovetta and Castaldo, 2020 ; Zattoni et al, 2020 ; Brodeur et al, 2021 ; Zitting et al, 2021 ), 5) studying the impact of mass media and governmental policies on users’ web searches ( Rovetta and Bhagavathula, 2020 ; Sousa-Pinto et al, 2020 ; Huynh Dagher et al, 2021 ), 6) studying the economic-commercial impact ( Brodeur et al, 2021 ; Sotis, 2021 ), 7) studying the spread of COVID-19 symptoms ( Ahmad et al, 2020 ; Jimenez et al, 2020 ; Kluger and Scrivener, 2020 ; Walker et al, 2020 ), 8) studying other various web interests ( Berger et al, 2021 ; Elsaie and Youssef, 2021 ). This type of research is mainly based on the search for statistical cross-correlations between users’ web searches related to specific topics, such as symptoms, drugs, therapies, vaccines, number of infected people, number of deaths, anxiety, fear, stress, etc., and the number of disease contagions and deaths officially registered after a certain timespan.…”