Impact of COVID-19 on pornography use: evidence from big data analyses (Preprint)

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.