Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Mar 02, 2021)
Date Submitted: Dec 24, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Impact of COVID-19 on pornography use: evidence from big data analyses
ABSTRACT
Background:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to radical changes in social distancing awareness and affected social relationship. Due to the large-scale lockdown, home quarantine and maintaining social distance, it was anticipated that sexual activities would be severely impacted. In contrast, retrospective self-report studies showed that pornography use and autoerotism increased during the pandemic.
Objective:
The current study used big-data databases available on internet to investigate factors that modulated the pornography use under the pandemic.
Methods:
Daily relative search volume (RSV) data from Google Trends spanning from 24th Feb, 2020 to 13th Jul, 2020 were extracted. Traffic data of Pornhub was extracted from the website Pornhub Insights, spanning from 24th Feb, 2020 to 13th Jul, 2020. The parameter is defined as ‘percent change in traffic compared to an average day in 2019’. Number of daily new case of COVID-19 was extracted from database on Our World in Data.
Results:
Google Trends showed that the relative search volume (RSV) for pornography increased after late March 2020, which was dated close to the announcement of the pandemic by the World Health Organization. The number of daily new cases of COVID-19 was positively correlated with the traffic of Pornhub, a popular pornography website, and the RSV of ‘pornography’. Moderation analysis demonstrated a significant main effect of daily new case of COVID-19 and the RSV of ‘social distancing’ in predicting Pornhub traffic / RSV of ‘pornography’. Furthermore, the RSV of ‘social distancing’ significantly moderated the relationship between daily new cases and Pornhub traffic / RSV of ‘pornography’. A stronger COVID-pornography use association was observed in heightened social distancing awareness.
Conclusions:
To conclude, increased pornography consumption during the pandemic was identified, which was associated with the severity of the pandemic. Social distancing awareness may be a key factor influencing interest and use of pornography. Further studies on the changes in sexual desire, and birth-rate control are worthwhile since the long-term public health may be affected by the changes in sexual behaviour during the pandemic.
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