The UK Watched a Lot of Porn in 2020

Drawing on an impressive list of sources for information, Ofcom discovered that the pandemic that forced more people in the UK online than ever before. “By the end of the year [2020],” they reported, “about 94% of UK homes had internet access, up from about 89% in 2019. And we spent more time online: an average of 3 hours 37 minutes a day on smartphones, tablets and computers.” 

Quite a bit of that daily internet time, it seems, was spent on porn sites. In the month of September 2020, according to the report, “Half (49%)305 of the UK adult population visited an adult content site and/or app…which equates to 26 million unique adult visitors.”

Unsurprisingly, Pornhub came out on top of the most-visited pile of porn sites, visited by a full third of the adult population of the UK in September 2020. That number, reported Ofcom’s report, was “up by 1 million visitors since September 2019.” Pornhub’s parent company, Mindgeek, also owns RedTube and YouPorn, which came in the 9th- and 10th-place slots on the most-viewed porn site list in the report, as well, bringing another 7.9 million views to the conglomerate in September 2020. And an astonishing 7% of the adult UK population visited Pornhub Premium during that same month—apparently willing to pay up for their own viewing pleasure during difficult times. 

As might be expected, Ofcom reported that most of the traffic to Pornhub was male. “Half of all UK adult males visited Pornhub that month, compared to 16% of females.” But it was interesting to note, as well, that in younger adult age groups, women were more likely than their older counterparts to watch porn during lockdown. While only about 16% of women in the UK visited Pornhub in September 2020, according to the report, “a third (33%) of 18-24 females” spent their free time on the site.

The report also took some time to note than OnlyFans, a UK-based app, did extremely well during the pandemic. The app, said Ofcom, is “an attractive option for creators wanting to generate an income” because of its openness to adult content and its 80:20 creator/platform split on revenue. Speaking of which, “Revenue for OnlyFans increased by a reported 553% in the year to November 2020, while the value generated by transactions made on the platform rose seven-fold to £1.7bn.” 

Since the report was looking at how people in the UK spent their time in 2020, it was careful to note: “It has been reported that economic factors caused by the lockdowns may have led people to turn to sites such as OnlyFans to generate an income, in the context of rising unemployment or furlough, and financial uncertainty for many in the UK.”

What else were people doing during lockdowns in the UK last year? Scrolling social media, apparently. According to the report, both YouTube and Facebook reached “over 95% of UK internet users in September 2020,” with an average UK resident spending about 43 minutes a day on YouTube and 31 minutes a day on Facebook in April 2020, “at the height of lockdown.” And, between watching porn and scrolling socials, said the report, more 62% of UK adults gamed to pass the time. 

Now that many “normal” real-life activities are opening back up, it will be interesting to see if these numbers remain as high as they were in 2020, or if porn viewing, OnlyFans memberships and creators, social scrolling, and gaming will decline in 2021.