PornHub Year in Review 2019 – Parents need to take notice
What lessons can parents learn from PornHub in order to protect their children?
Well quite a lot actually. More people are accessing pornography than ever before, according to PornHub. While December is generally not a time many people would normally associated with pornography, it is the time of year PornHub release their yearly statistics. Once again they make for very interesting and almost unbelievable reading.
If you have never heard of PornHub ’s not just men looking at porn\nThe ’s not just men looking at porn\nThe before, it describes itself as the most popular porn site in the world. It’s a pornography site that’s created by adults, with content pertaining to consenting adults, for adults. The statistics it produces every year, are without doubt very valuable information relating to adult users and visitors to the site. That said, let’s look at the contents and see if we can use these statistics to help parents.
42 Billion Site Visits in 2019
The adult website experienced an unprecedented number of visitors in 2019. A total of 42 billion visitors in one year. An average of 115 million people visiting the site in a 24 hour period. That’s “the equivalent of the populations of Canada, Australia, Poland and the Netherlands, all visiting in one day!”.
The number of searches performed on the site was 39 Billion, up 8.7 billion in comparison to 2018. There was 6.83 million new uploads to the site in 2019. PornHub notes that in order to view all of the content uploaded just last year alone, you would need to have started viewing the content non-stop, back in the year 1850.
Of the 7.7 billion people on the planet at the moment, there is an estimated 4.5 billion people currently have access to the internet. This includes ever man woman and child. According to those figures, this would mean that on average every single person on the planet, who has access to the internet right now, visited PornHub on average about nine times over the year.
It should also be noted, that while PornHub claims to be the most popular porn site in the world, and certainly does have the statistics to support such a claim. However, PornHub is only one of the many countless sites affording access to pornography online. in 2019, just on this porn site alone, there was 11, 082 hours of pornography viewed online every single minute. That is over 8.2 billion hours of pornography viewed by users, again its worth mentioning, on this site alone in 2019. How much of this content was viewed by children is not reported, but one has to imagine it is quite substantial given the statistics.
It’s not just men looking at Porn
The break down of male to female users has also changed in 2019. There has been a steady increase in the number of female pornography viewers visiting the site in the last few years. In 2014, the total number of females visiting the site, accounted for 23 percent. In 2019, this figure had increased by 9, to 32 percent of all site visits.
This is qiute a substantial increase given the massive figures involved. This would also support the view that females are interested in watching pornography after all. So contrary to popular belief, it’s not just males who view pornography. This growing audience of female viewers has not escaped those who produce pornography. Content is now being developed and produced specifically for a female audience.
Amateur content most popular in 2019
Of note to us, and of serious concern in these statistics, is the enormous increase in interest in the classification of Amateur pornographic content. Our concern arises out of the reported increase we have seen from Post Primary students. All around the country, we have listened to commentary from the students themselves regarding dramatic increase in the exchange of self generated sexual imagery. This is more commonly known as ‘Sexting’.
The proliferation in the numbers of students who have received an unsolicited sexual image, or who have been asked for one, have increased dramatically year on year. During our presentations, it is very clear student are experiencing enormous pressure to exchange this type of content. This year by far, has seen a wider acceptance of the behaviour by Irish students who view it as normal and very common. It was always a concern to us that the normalisation of the exchange of sexual imagery between students could lead to an increase in a demand for such content.
PornHub has seen the category of Amateur explode over the last 12 months. Figures show in increase in the number of “New Models”, with 98, 000 registering with the site in 2019. The site notes the increase may be due to a change in tastes for more real and authentic, rather than the “porn actresses look”. PornHub also boasts, that “anyone can now be a porn star” now.
Many parents might find this unsettling, after all, every new amateur porn actor or actress is somebody’s son or daughter. Amateur was the most searched term by males visiting the site in 2019, causing the search term to jump 10 places up from 11th in 2018, to number 1 in 2019. One has to wonder how many of these new young amateur girls featured in the 6.83 million uploads to PornHub, even know they are now “Porn Stars”?
Smartphones used to access porn
The statistics for how people are accessing pornography also reveal some interesting insights. 76.6 percent of users accessed the pornography site from a smartphone. The very same digital device every single kid, who by the way never ever makes any phone calls, asks their parents for while still in national school.
This is an increase on 2018 of 7 percent. There is a 52 percent to 46.8 percent split in favour of Android to Apple device used to access the site. The search engines used also seen an increase with Google Chrome accounting for 44.3 percent of the searches, Apple’s Safari at 41.6 percent and Samsung increasing its position to 6.8 percent, up by 28 percent on 2018. As parents, perhaps the time has come to question whether a child who never makes any phone calls at all, actually needs a Smartphone?
Gaming Consoles used to access porn
Another area of that should be of great interest to parents are PornHubs statistics for Gaming Console These include devices such as Sony PlayStation and PlayStation Vita, Xbox, Nintendo 3DS and the Nintendo WiiU. All of these devices require internet access to play online games such as Fortnite. What many parents may not be aware of, is that they can be also used to browse the internet for pornography. This is highlighted rather eloquently by PornHub as “Game consoles aren’t just for playing games, they can also be a handy way to play with yourself!”. Indeed.
Over half of all Gaming Console searches came from PlayStation consoles accounting for 51.5 percent. This was followed by Xbox at 34.7%, PlayStation Vita at 9.1 percent, Nintendo WiiU at 4.3 percent and the Nintendo 3DS at 0.4 percent. These figures would strongly suggest that parents need to ensure parental controls are enabled on gaming consoles to prevent this type of online access to pornography.
Children’s Games, TV & Movie Characters
One might wonder how many adults in comparison to children, would search for characters from games or movies on a pornography website. While we don’t have an answer for that, we can see that games such as Pokemon, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Apex Legends feature second, third, fourth and fifth place in the statistics of most searched for games on Pornhub. There are even statistics of searches for movie and TV characters which are popular with children such as The Avengers, Teen Titans, The Incredibles, Captain Marvel, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Toy Story and Spiderman to name but a few.
It is possible perhaps that it’sonly adults who search of this type of content on pornography websites and not children. However, it might not be in the best interests of children to have such content available on a pornographic website, after all a child with unrestricted access might accidently stumble upon a very adult version of a popular game or movie character like Spiderman.
Advice for Parents
Given the statistics released from PornHub on the 11th of December 2019, parents might feel a child with unrestricted and unmonitored access to the internet is not a great idea. In reality the battle to protect children from access to pornography was over, long before most Irish parents knew it was even going to be an issue. However, that does not mean we throw the towel in just yet. While exposure to pornography is ultimately inevitable for children, we can attempt to delay it for as long as possible and also educate them regarding its presence online.
We have consistently supported parents who decide not to give a child their own digital device, until at least post primary school. If you do nothing else, we would whole heartedly appeal to you to do the same if your child is in National School. Young children are neither responsible, nor intelligent enough to navigate the countless dangers, harm and inappropriate content they will absolutely encounter in the online world, without parental supervision. Especially, while still in National School.
Other steps to take include ensuring that every single digital device in the home has appropriate parental controls functioning on the devices. Making sure digital devices used by children are only done so in full view of parents. Check the device after it is used by a child. Switch off the WiFi at night. There is no such thing as failing to protect a child in a family home from early exposure to pornography. However there are many excuses. The harsh reality for us all is that excuses do nothing to protect young eyes from inappropriate content.