Porn analytics can be illuminating

I won’t go too deeply into this, as (a) it’s Christmas Eve and (b) the broader topic might scare off some readers, but there’s an article on Gizmodo recapping the year in porn (via PornHub’s porn analytics charts; I won’t directly link to those). Couple of basic things: for most G-20 countries, the month with the most porn viewed is January; the least porn viewed tends to be August. Time spent on PornHub? (And remember, this is just one site of probably close to millions.) U.S., UK, France and Mexico are the top four.

Now check out the “longest duration (on the site)” chart:

Then contrast it with the “shortest duration (on the site)” chart:

Basic trend line: SEC-school states dominate the top five; the liberal New England masses don’t spend as much time ogling others online. OK. Not sure what that says broadly about society in the U.S., but … I’m sure it says something. (“WARREN 2016!”)

Percentage of traffic by device is interesting — it’s still 51 percent desktop/laptop, but mobile has gotten to 40 percent. Some claim that 1 in 5 mobile searches now are for porn. That’s intense, especially considering porn is banned from the App Store and, now, Google Glass.

If you track subscriptions to online porn sites (which may be a flawed methodology, considering how much free porn is now available in the world), Utah is No. 1. That’s somewhat surprising and somewhat not surprising (it’s theoretically possible Utah has a higher moral compass than a lot of the U.S., so subscribing rather than searching for free might be more common there), and it’s also what has led, in part, to the idea that conservatives watch more porn than liberals. (Actually, Virginia and Maryland — two Mid-Atlantic/kinda Southern/somewhat liberal in parts states — rank pretty high in porn tendencies too.) All this data comes from a Harvard — yes, Harvard researches porn tendencies — study (PDF) from Benjamin Edelman. If you think it’s awkward/disgusting that HBS researches porn, consider this: on PornHub alone, 63.2 billion — that’s billion with a b — videos were clicked and played in 2013. 63 billion. That’s about 50 times the number of active users Facebook has, and Facebook is oft-considered the gold standard for user bases. So … it’s worth people analyzing. Hey, the NSA looks into it too.

And finally, there is a tie between income and porn-viewing:

Low-income cities tend to do it a bit more, but not necessarily per capita.