We’ve rounded up, as much as possible, an extensive list of up-to-date 2023 statistics on pornography. However, we tried to be careful to avoid terms and porn stats that could be triggering. (Trigger warning still unavoidable.)
On this page you’ll find a range of stats on:
- Pornography Demographics
- Social Media and Pornography
- Pornography Industry Market Size
- Business Impacts on Porn
- The Environment
- Adult Actors
- Effect on Relationships
- Porn and Children
- Church Goers
- Virtual Reality
- And more…
Content
Who Watches Porn?
Porn demographics by age and gender
- The average age that children first view porn (usually accidentally) is now 7 or 8
- 2023 porn stats note that the average age group that frequent the site are 37 year-olds
- Women visitors to P*rnhub increased to 36% of total visitors in 2023, up 4% since 2019
- Women in the Philippines watch more porn (58%) than men 42%
- The United States watches far more porn than any other nation,
- 67% of male teens and young adults view porn as least 1x a month, 2016 Barna Study
- 33% of female teens and young adults view porn 1x a month, 2016 Barna Study
Children, Social Media, and Child Sexual Abuse Material — How Kids Get Into Porn
- On NCOSE’s Dirty Dozen list is Discord’s chat and video sharing app which has around 175 million active monthly users – largely the gaming community. Lax age verification guidelines and very limited parental controls make Discord a dangerous child predator’s hunting spot.
- The BBC reports nudity, porn advertisements, and children exposing themselves in video chat app Omegle which almost doubled in users from 34 million monthly visitors to 65 million a month between January 2020 and January 2021
- BBC also named TikTok as the most downloaded app of 2020 with 689 million monthly active users. TikTok attracts a generally younger audience. It’s full of “soft” porn, homemade porn star influencers, and easily becomes a gateway to harder-core porn
- Instagram is a leading site for grooming and child sexual abuse materials. Using Instagram is also known to cause mental health harms to children
- The UK charity, Internet Watch Foundation, (IWF) reported a 77% increase in 2020 of self-generated child sexual abuse content online.
- Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is growing so rapidly that the Internet Watch Foundation and others cannot remove CSAM rapidly enough.
Who actually pays for porn — market demographics
In fact, millennials and Gen Z are now the largest paying market for porn — despite the large amount of free porn available.
“They now actually make up the largest paying porn consumer base for several producers, outspending older generations substantially. All of which leads Hawkins to assert that ‘millennials may well be the saviors of the porn industry’.” — Mashable.com
- “Most viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34. This makes up over half the entire viewership. The 18-24 age bracket made up 27% of all traffic and the 25-34 age bracket made up 26% of all traffic.”
- “The 35 to 44 age bracket made up 19% of all traffic and the 45 to 54 age bracket made up 13%.” – Pornhub 2023 Year in Review
Does porn leave this world a better place for our children?
We think keeping tabs on the porn industry matters for that reason alone. We want to help you protect our future generations.
Business Impacts
Porn As A Big Business Influencer — The Stats About Porn Don’t Lie.
If you’re a living, breathing person, your life is certain to be touched by porn.
Is porn really that big of an influencer on society? And does our day-to-day level of porn use really matter to our world?
- A popular often-cited 2014 article by Chris Morris in NBC news online states, “Globally, porn is a $97 billion industry, according to Kassia Wosick, assistant professor of sociology at New Mexico State University…”
- In contrast, this 2020 report estimated the 2019 global porn market around 35.17 billion — yet still a significant revenue
- MindGeek — (rebranded as Aylo in 2023) is THE mother company of many major porn sites — is not publicly reporting their income, but as of March 2023 private equity company Ethical Capital Partners now owns them.
- Of the top 15 most-viewed websites world-wide, 3 of them are porn sites. That’s a minimum of 20% of all websites viewed globally
- Netflix and OnlyFans, along with other major corporations were recently outed on the National Center On Sexual Exploitation’s 2022 Dirty Dozen list for selling sexual exploitation through porn-infused videos and more. This list is updated yearly.
- According to IBISWorld, the US porn industry has grown from about $600 million in revenue in 2018 to over $1.1 billion in revenue in 2023.
Pornhub’s 2021 data reports: “Over 125 million daily visits to Pornhub’s network of sites…” (daily site traffic was not listed for 2023)
These reports represent a wide variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. By analyzing these billions of yearly visits and pageviews, we get a glimpse of porn’s widespread influence, especially on 18-35 year olds.
What’s missing from the data? MindGeek’s/Aylo’s revenue, quite possibly.
Societal Impacts
Porn’s Impact On The Environment
The Smartphone — the Most-Traveled Porn Highway
According to Forbes: “… in 2020, smartphones accounted for 80% of porn traffic. That should be extra interesting as many of us were stuck in quarantine, with our desktop or laptop computers right there but still preferred to access porn on our smartphones…”
In their 2023 “Year in Review”, Pornhub reveals smartphones now account for 93% of traffic to their website, up from 83% in 2021
Does porn use on cell phones contribute to global warming?
- Plastic waste — Cell phones are hard to recycle & less than 1% end up being recycled
- Production emissions — cobalt production for lithium ion batteries uses a lot of electricity, plus the production process of the actual cell phones, estimated at 11% of emissions for Information and Communication technology (ICT)
- Mining waste — lithium mining is also harmful to the environment due to excessive water consumption (about 500,000 gallons per metric ton of lithium)
Sex Positivity and Porn — True or False
When violence is a sexual script commonly found in porn, can we consider this “sex-positive”?
- A recent, large-scale UK study found scripts of sexual violence including incest in 1 out of 8 porn titles (about 12%). And that number is conservative — considering the study excluded BDSM
- The word ‘Teen’ was a more commonly used term to describe pornography than any descriptions of sexual acts or body parts. The word ‘Teen’ was also used more frequently in sexually violent content…” (8.5%of porn titles)
- Researcher Dr. John D. Foubert reports: “Over 50 studies show a strong connection between pornography and sexual violence…
- 8,900 and 10,500 children, ages 13 to 17, are commercially exploited each year in the United States — attributable to porn consumption in part
Porn Actors — Real People Harmed in the Porn Industry
The porn industry takes advantage of porn stars at the expense of their health — porn actors speak out
Porn stars testify that they felt trapped doing types of porn they never agreed to.
Porn and Racism — Messages That Influence Generations
Another revealing study randomly selected titles from popular major porn sites. These porn stats reveal a racist slant in the porn industry.
- In these titles, “Black women were more often the targets of aggression compared to white women. Black women were the targets of aggression in 50.8% of scenes, while white women were targets of aggression in 36% of scenes…”
- “Black men were more often portrayed as perpetrators of aggression compared to white men. Black men were depicted as aggressors against women in 47.3% of scenes, compared to 35.3% of scenes depicting white men as aggressors against women…”
Marriage Impacts
Impacts of Porn on Marriage
- Longevity of marriage — A 2016 study from the American Sociological Association shows divorce rates double with beginning porn use in marriage
- Women are more impacted by porn-related divorce rates than men:
“…people who started watching porn were more likely to split with their partners during the course of the survey. For men, the chance of divorce went from 5% to 10%. For women, that number jumped from 6% to 18%.”
- Porn’s links to sexual violence includes domestic abuse. First responders, such as police and paramedics, also note the links between porn and domestic abuse. This includes intimate partner violence (IPV).
- Women are most often the victims of sexual violence.
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Protection From Pornography
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Effects on Churches
Churchgoers Across All Denominations — Not Immune To Porn
As the previously mentioned Barna group study highlighted, 4 in 10 teens and young adult males in the church use porn once or twice a month.
But wait… there’s a bit of light at the end of this tunnel.
Though disheartening, porn’s influence on the church is usually measurable by the devotedness of the church-goer.
“For example, Perry uses data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to show that, among Protestant males who are members of the most conservative denominations, the share who have viewed a pornographic film in the last year has been roughly stable for the last 20 years, at around one-third.” ~ IFStudies.org, Lyman Stone
Across all religious groups in America, people who attend religious services more frequently are far less likely to view pornography.
Future Trends
Virtual Reality and Porn — Another Major Player in the Porn Industry
In a world where virtual reality is growing in popularity and availability, gaming and virtual porn are frequently linked.
- VR porn searches are near the top of Pornhub’s own compiled customer data search list
- According to Insider.com, “The global Virtual-Reality Pornography Market is expected to exceed more than US$ 1 Billion by 2025 in the given forecast period…”
- Playstation consoles – hugely popular with young teens – also generated more traffic to Pornhub: “PS5 made up 40.1% of traffic, up +77.3% from 2022.”
Future Generations — Porn and the Long Term Effects
Does porn really leave this world a better place for our children? Parents often feel dismayed and helpless if they’ve discovered their child has been viewing porn.
We think keeping tabs on the porn industry matters for that reason alone.
14-Day Free Trial
Protection From Pornography
Change your habits, change your life: Start our 14-day free trial to help get rid of pornography for good.
Deepfake porn – the harms of generative AI
Currently there is an alarming 500%+ increase in deepfake porn images, especially harming innocent victims whose faces are being used in AI generated porn videos. Victims call this a “life-long sentence”. Often, as soon as one video is removed, another duplicate pops up.
We’ve seen that from current porn stats that porn harms the world’s most valuable resources: our children, individuals, the environment, and our valued relationships.
Do you want to be a world-changer?
Lessen your carbon footprint?
Live the Golden Rule?
Consider the benefits of quitting porn. You can regain precious time, and invest in your mental and emotional fitness.
What would quitting porn enable you to accomplish personally?
At Ever Accountable, we believe you matter. Your goals and dreams are important. We’re here to help empower people to quit porn!
Using our simple, high-quality app and the power of human connections, accountability, and relationships, you can reach for your highest potential today!
