How Many People Use Pornography?

94% of men and 87% of women have seen pornography at some point in their lifetime (Herbenick et al., 2020).

Among users of Amazon.com, 92% of men and 60% of women viewed some form of pornography in the previous month. The three primary kinds of pornography consumed were written pornography, pictures, and videos. Videos were consumed most often, but women were much more likely to consume written pornography than men (Solano, et al., 2020).

About half of 8th graders have viewed pornography.  Such viewing made early sexual debut, unsafe sex, and multiple sexual partners more likely (Lin, et al., 2020).

On average, boys see pornography first at the age of 13 and girls at the age of 17 (Herbenick et al., 2020). 

Pornography use increased by 11% during the Covid pandemic (Mestre-Bach et al, 2020). 

Data released by the world’s most popular Internet porn site, reveal that in 2019 alone, there were over 42 billion visits to its website (Pornhub, 2019).

If you watched all the new videos uploaded in just one year on the world’s most popular pornography site, it would take you 168 years to watch them all (McTavish, 2020). 

Today, pornography is most often accessed through cell phones (Herbenick et al., 2020). 

64% of adult men and 42% of adult women view pornography at least monthly (Digital Journal, 2014).

63% of young men (18-30) view pornography once a week or more.  79% view it at least monthly (Barna, 2014).

19% of young women (18-30) view porn once a week or more; 34% view it at least monthly (Barna, 2014).

In the 1970s, 45% of young adult men viewed an X rated movie at least annually (Price et al., 2015).

In the 1990s, found that 61% of young adult men were viewing porn, just before the Internet boom (Price et al., 2015).

In the 2000s, with the Internet, 86% of young adult men were viewing pornography (Braun-Courville & Rojas, 2009; Carroll et al., 2008).

In the 1970s, 28% of young adult women had viewed an X rated movie at least annually (Price et al., 2015).

In the 2000s, 36% of young adult women had viewed pornography (Price et al., 2015).

Well over two-thirds of 15-17 year old adolescents have seen porn websites when they did not intend to access them (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2001).

Between 2008 and 2011, exposure to porn among boys under the age of 13 jumped from 14% to 49%.  Boys’ daily use more than doubled (Sun et al, 2014).

The average child sees Internet pornography for the first time at age 11 (Dines, 2010; DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016).