Pornhub recorded a staggering 50,000 searches per minute on its platform in 2017 while the popularity of ‘women-friendly’ content skyrocketed by a record 1,400 percent on the adult website.
That’s a lot of self love, with 28.5 billion visitors to the site last year or a whopping 81 million people per day. Break it down further: that equates to 50,000 searches per minute or 800 searches per second. And it wasn’t just people watching. Other, more adventurous, porn enthusiasts had a go at making a bit of DIY filth – all for your viewing pleasure.
Of the 4 million videos uploaded to the platform in 2017, 810,000 were amatuer endeavors. In total, 595,482 hours of adult entertainment were uploaded which, if you started watching now, would take even the most dedicated ‘self-gratifier’ 68 years to finish.
But what did all this porn consist of, and who was watching it? One of the most interesting insights was that more people than ever before searched the ‘Porn for Women’ category.
In fact, it was the top trending search throughout the year, increasing a staggering 1,400 percent. Sex therapist, and director of the Pornhub Sexual Wellness Center, Laurie Betito reckons she knows why this is happening and the reasons may be a surprise to some.
“2017 seems to have been the year where women have come forward to express their desires more openly,” she said. “From the “Me too” movement, to prominent females, the likes of Hillary Clinton and Nikki Haley on the world stage, women are feeling more empowered and they have found their voice. This is a sign of things to come.”
What about the male visitors to pornhub? Perhaps, unsurprisingly, women-on-women searches topped the charts again in 2017. It was the third year in a row that ‘lesbian’ was Pornhub’s No.1 search worldwide.
Yet again Laurie Betito thinks she knows why: “Lesbians have been the #1 fantasy of men since the beginning of time. For the men that aren’t likely to ever have a threesome with lesbians, this is an ideal way for them to live out their fantasy,” she said.
Adding that: “We can’t ignore women viewers though; for women that have a soft fantasy or curiosity, lesbian porn allows them to explore that part of their sexuality without risk. Of course, for bi or lesbian women, this category is an obvious choice.”
Some other trends range from interesting to just downright strange, and not in a good way. Some people were interested in anarchic, comedy sci-fi cartoon Rick & Morty, while others wanted to see how fidget spinners could be used in the act, (full disclosure, we don’t know, promise).
Interestingly, the 2017 August solar eclipse had a marked effect on viewership, with people presumably pausing for a second or two to gaze at the cosmic ballet going on above, before plowing right back into it.
Politics also heavily influenced our porn habits last year with the Trump family, including patriarch Donald, seeing their Pornhub stock rise as well as British royalty in waiting, Meghan Markle.