According to a 2022 survey of online users in the United States, a significant percentage of men in different age groups reported watching pornography in the past month. Almost *** out of every ** respondents aged between 30 and 49 years stated they watched pornographic content in the past month. Among men aged 18 to 29 years, approximately ** percent of respondents reported watching online adult content in the past month.

According to a survey of users conducted in the United States between September and October 2022, 62 percent of male respondents reported having a habit of watching pornographic content. In comparison, 29 percent of respondents reported having had the habit of watching such type of content, while around eight percent of respondents preferred not to say.

According to a 2022 survey of users in the United States, men who watch pornography tend to report higher levels of loneliness, insecurity, and dissatisfaction with their appearance. Approximately ** percent of men who reported watching adult content in the past 24 hours said they felt lonely and isolated, while only ** percent of men who had never watched pornography reported feeling the same way. Similarly, ** percent of men who had watched adult content online in the past 24 hours said they were unhappy with their physical appearance.

With the most popular pornographic site visited by French millennials in 2020 being Youporn.fr, the source wanted to assess the frequency to which French men attracted to other men were watching porn, compared to heterosexual men. Thus, ** percent of homosexual, bisexual or "curious" heterosexuals were watching porn almost every day, compared to only *** percent of heterosexual men.

According to a survey of online users conducted in January 2024 among audiences in Great Britain, almost *** in ** respondents aged between 25 and 49 years reported watching porn most days. In comparison, around ** percent of respondents aged between 18 and 24 reported watching porn content between one and three times per week. Around **** in ** respondents aged between 50 and 65 reported they did not watch porn, although they said they had accessed this type of content before.

As of December 2022, 21 percent of young male teenagers and young adults in England reported watching pornography every day or more often. By comparison, only seven percent of female teens and young adults reported watching pornographic content with the same frequency. Among young women aged between 16 and 21, 34 percent reported not having watched pornographic content at all, while 24 percent reported watching this type of content between two and six times per week.

In 2023, approximately ** percent of young men between ** and ** reported watching pornography once per week. In contrast, ** percent of women in the same age group reported to no consuming pornography at all.

Is porn consumed only by men? It seems that this stereotype is still partly true in 2021. In Europe, men are the main visitors of the porn website Pornhub. This can indicate that pornographic viewing remains an activity mostly done by men. However, female visitors of Pornhub in Spain and Poland accounted for 38 and 32 percent respectively of all visitors from their countries. Furthermore, more than a quarter of visitors were women in other European countries. In other words, women also appear to consume porn.

A gender-gap in frequency of porn consumption  

In 2014, French men were more frequently visiting pornographic sites than women. A quarter of responding men visited such websites at least once a week in France, whereas only three percent of women declared that they visited one in a week. For this reason, it could be discussed that even though women do consume porn, in terms of frequency men are the main consumers.

Porn consumption parallels the evolution of technology  

Long gone is the reign of magazines, videotapes and even DVDs. Nowadays, pornographic websites, like Pornhub, are leading the industry. With technology evolving, more and more people are visiting these websites on their mobile phones. In the Netherlands, such mobile phone use grew from 51 percent in 2015 to 62 percent in 2018. Similar findings were discovered in France . In spite of this, pornography remains a sensitive topic, at least in the U.S., where over half of Americans stated that porn was morally wrong.

With the most popular pornographic site visited by French millennials in 2020 being Youporn.fr, the source wanted to assess the frequency to which French men attracted to other men were watching porn. Thus, ** percent of homosexual, bisexual or "curious" heterosexuals were watching porn almost every day, compared to only *** percent of heterosexual men. Compared to these results, most of heterosexual men (** percent) watched porn more than a year ago

This statistic presents results from a survey among 40 to 70 year olds from the United Kingdom (UK) in January 2017 on how often they use internet pornography. *** percent of those surveyed stated that they watched internet pornography **** to *** times a week. However, the vast majority said that they have never watch internet pornography.

How often do Danes watch porn? According to a representative study published in 2019, around a third of the Danish men watched porn two to six times a week in the past year. In comparison, the majority of the women in Denmark did not watch porn at all within the past year. Among the women who had watched porn within the past year, the biggest share of the respondents did so less than once a month.

In France in 2019, the source had found a link between greater autonomy in female pleasure and a rise in the use of pornography and sex toys. Here, the sexual freedom and the expression of female autoeroticism appears to be intrinsically linked to greater access by French women to media of sexual arousal, such as films or pornographic images: one in two women (47 percent) had admitted to having already been on a pornographic site.

Pornographic consumption behavior of men

The consumption of pornographic content is much more intense among men who love men than for the rest of the male population: for more than one in ten, porn occupies a daily place in their life with 15 percent of men watching porn almost every day, against barely two percent of straight people. Generally speaking, the virtual activities involving sex are mostly carried out or consumed by exclusively homosexual men, which goes hand in hand with a much more widespread use of other arousal media such as webcams: in 2019, 48 percent of them had already seen someone showing off in front of a webcam (compared to 21 percent among straight men).

Dangers linked to pornography

Not surprisingly, while online security has been an issue increasingly raised in the past years, sexual activities involving the web can come with some dangers. Apart from a possible addiction to porn, which has been expressed by 31 percent of homosexual men, for example, the fear of the exposure of private pictures containing nude content was also a great concern for 51 percent of women. Having private explicit content exposed, which often occurs without the consent of the people involved, is referred to as "revenge porn", an act that 16 percent of people have already come across on the internet.

In 2023, around six in 10 users of Pornhub in the Philippines were women, while four in 10 were men. Approximately half of the pornhub.com audience in Colombia, Argentina, or Mexico were women. Pornhub, which is owned and operated by Aylo (previously known as MindGeek), is one of the leading adult entertainment platform worldwide, reaching users from its main market of the United States to Latin America and Europe.

In 2023, approximately ** percent of young men between ** and ** said they had learned about pornography through a friend. In contrast, ** percent of women in the same age group reported accidentally discovering pornography on the internet.

Getting sexually aroused was the most common reason to watch porn for Danes, according to a survey from 2018. However, men were more inclined to watch porn than women if their partner wanted less sex than they did. In similar vein, nearly one in three of Danish men watching porn did not want to inform their partner, while only ** percent of the women stated the same.

In 2023, approximately 52 percent of men between the ages of 16 and 29 said they watched pornography to masturbate. Roughly 23 percent of women in the same age group said they watched it out of curiosity.

According to a survey of French citizens conducted in April, 2023, ** percent of respondents had done the experience of surfing online to watch pornographic films or images. Over half of respondents reported also to have watched pornographic films or shows, while ** percent reported having accessed such content on television. Approximately **** in ** respondents had consumed erotic literature, while less than *** in ** reported having listened to an erotic podcast.

In 2023, approximately half of young Spanish men between the ages of ** and ** reported their first exposure to pornography when they were between 12 and 15 years old. Among young women, about ** percent had their first exposure between the ages of ** and **.

In December 2024, *********** was the most popular pornographic websites among online audiences in the United Kingdom. The popular adult website saw around ****** million visits in the examined month. ******* ranked second, with almost ** million visits generated in the last month of 2024, while Cyprus-based ************ saw ** million visits during the same time.

Who watches online porn? Online pornography consumption is a heavily gendered phenomenon in the UK. As of May 2023, over ** million men and male teenagers were reported to be watching pornography online, while the number of women accessing pornographic content online was *** million. Pornhub was the adult content website with the highest reach among adult men in the UK in 2023, as ** percent of all digital male users reported engaging with the website. In comparison, while Pornhub was still the pornographic website with the highest reach among adult women, only **** percent of all female online users in the UK reported engaging with the platform.

Online porn consumption trends in the UK Approximately *** in ** users aged between 18 and 24 years, as well as among users aged 25 and 49 years, watched pornography two or three times per week. Overall, the frequency of watching pornographic content among online audiences was ****** among users aged between 18 and 24 years than for users over 50 years of age. The preferred time of day for accessing online pornographic content was between the morning and the afternoon, as ** percent of UK users reported seeking this type of content between **** and *****.

In 2022, male users in France who were aged between 16 and 17 years were reported spending over one hour on a monthly basis engaging with pornographic websites. In comparison, female users of the same aged were reported spending around half a hour engaging with the same type of content. Among adults, men were spending over two years per month on pornographic websites, while women in the same age group spent around ** minutes on such websites.