With more and more people around the world practicing social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, the adult film site PornHub has reported a massive spike in web traffic. The website issued a press release last week saying that its clicks were on the rise, and the trend has reportedly continued. The news has been taken as humorous by some and tragic by others.
According to PornHub, over 120 million people visit its site daily — or at least, they did before COVID-19 cropped up. Now, with much of the population avoiding crowds, working from home or being out of work altogether, those metrics are on the rise. On Wednesday, March 11, the site reported a 5.7 percent spike in traffic. It gave some more intriguing specifics on timing as well.
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PornHub reported that traffic was 11 percent higher than usual at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, indicating that people are staying up later now that they are working from home. Conversely, the site said that traffic was 9 percent lower than usual at 8 a.m. Generally, it explained, it gets a lot of traffic around 8 a.m. before people head off to work, but with many people transitioning to working from home, the urgency has diminished.
The company tracked more than visitors, however, it tracked the activity of its users as well. PornHub has reportedly been getting searches for terms like “coronavirus,” “corona virus” or “covid,” among other related words. These searches first appeared on Jan. 25, and reportedly peaked on March 5 with a staggering 1.5 million searches.
This activity was broken down by region as well. Out of the whole globe, users in Slovakia searched for “coronavirus” on PornHub more than anyone else. The U.S. was relatively low on that list, but out of those who did search, most were concentrated in Washington, D.C.
Some of the most jarring statistics in PornHub’s findings came from Italy, the first country to institute a strict national quarantine. The web traffic for PornHub coming from Italy rose in massive leaps once the quarantine was in effect, jumping by as much as 13.8 percent in a single day.
Other parts of Europe are now following a similar pattern, hitting peaks and valleys in their visits to the adult film site. Most are changing up their schedules to account for their new lifestyles, providing an awkward portrait of life in the time of the pandemic.
Experts say the social distancing period of the outbreak should go on for at least two more weeks in the U.S. For the latest information on the coronavirus pandemic, visit the CDC’s website.
