Porndemic? Here’s What Really Happened With Porn Use During the Pandemic

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, much was said and written about sex and masturbation in the popular media. The implication of many stories was that people were going to be really bored and horny. As a result, what else would people do but constantly have sex and masturbate?

Some articles pointed to a spike in viewership on popular porn tube sites as support for their assertion, suggesting that there would be a sustained pandemic porn boom. This also led some to express worry that problematic porn use would rise and that more people were going to get “addicted” to adult content.

So what actually happened? A new study suggests that all the talk of a “porndemic” was greatly overexaggerated.

A longitudinal, nationally representative study of 2,518 American adults was carried about between August 2019 and October 2020. This study obviously began before the pandemic, so looking at how the pandemic affected porn use was not the initial purpose of the research; however, the data were able to speak to it.

There were a total of 5 waves of data collection: August 2019, February 2020, May 2020, August 2020, and October 2020. At each time point, participants were asked to report on how frequently they viewed porn alone (not with a partner) since the last data collection period.

For purposes of this study, pornography was defined as “any sexually explicit films, video clips or pictures displaying the genital area, which intends to sexually arouse the viewer; this may be seen on the internet, in a magazine, in a book, or on television.”

They were also asked about self-perceived problematic porn use (e.g., feeling “addicted” to porn and like you can’t stop watching it), psychological distress, and (in later waves of data collection) whether they perceived any changes in their own porn use during the pandemic.

Porn use frequency fluctuated over the course of the study; however, in May of 2020, which was just after the peak of pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions, more people reported using porn in the past month compared to any of the other follow-up waves of data collection.

However, when looking at what people said about changes in their own porn use, only a minority of participants (14%) in May 2020 reported that their porn use had increased since the pandemic began; by contrast, 20% reported a decrease, whereas 66% reported no change. On a side note, this is very similar to what we found in a Kinsey Institute study around the same time, in which about 1 in 5 people reported an increase in porn viewership.

That said, among those who reported an increase, their usage of porn returned to levels similar to that of other users by August 2020 and remained pretty stable through October. Thus, the overall trend was actually toward less porn use as the pandemic wore on.

Problematic pornography use also decreased over time, but only for men. Women’s problematic porn use was low to begin with and stayed low, so there wasn’t much room for it to move.

Overall, these data suggest that there was indeed a small spike in porn use early on in the pandemic, but only for a minority of users. Further, this spike was temporary—those who used more porn early on in the pandemic did not continue to use more over time.

What accounts for this pattern of results? It’s possible that the initial spike for some users was the result of boredom or just having more time on one’s hands (so to speak). It may have also reflected the fact that dating and casual sex were more restricted at that time, which may have led more people to pursue sexual gratification in virtual or online environments. However, as the pandemic went on and as restrictions were loosened, people may have returned more to their previous patterns of behavior.

Any way you look at it, these results provide further evidence that many of the bold sexual predictions made at the beginning of the pandemic just didn’t hold water when subjected to scientific scrutiny.

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To learn more about this research, see: Grubbs, J.B., et al. (2021). Porndemic? A longitudinal study of pornography use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in a nationally representative sample of Americans.