Here's Who Is Actually Watching Porn
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Internet pornography is often considered part of society's moral decay, but the truth is that sexually explicit material has been around for a long time.
Now that society consumes pornography predominantly online, research groups are able to measure exactly who types what and where they click.
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What is porn?
In the famous words of a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk who was asked to described pornography, “Mr. Justice, you will know it when you see it.” But to clear things up, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as:
“Movies, pictures, magazines, etc., that show or describe naked people or sex in a very open and direct way in order to cause sexual excitement.”
Who watches porn?
Men and women.
- 79 percent of 18 to 30-year-old American men watch internet porn at least once per month, according to pornography statistics compiled by Covenant Eyes, a site that filters pornography sites.
- 76 percent of 18 to 30-year-old American women report that they watch porn at least once a month, Covenant Eyes reports.
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That gap between genders becomes wider when frequency is a variable: 63 percent of the same male population say they watch porn “several times a week,” while only 21 percent of women say that they do.
Overall, the odds a visitor to a pornographic website is male are 1 in 1.4, while the odds a visitor to a pornographic website is female are 1 in 3.6, according to the Book of Odds.
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Pornography is accessed in the workplace, too
People watch porn at work, too. The Book of Odds references a research group that found 1 in 8.3 employees with Internet access will look at porn at work. The odds an adult who visited a pornographic website at work and claim it was an accident is 1 in 1.1.
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A study of 474 human resources professionals found that about two-thirds of HR professionals found porn on employee computers. 43 percent of those people had found the material more than once.
The porn industry continues to grow
Regardless of how you feel about porn, there's no doubt that it will continue to grow as an industry. NBC News reported in January of 2015 that globally, the industry is worth $97 billion.
