New Year, New Porn Trends: What was Popular in Porn in 2022?

Pornhub recently released their 2022 year-in-review detailing users’ searches and viewing habits, revealing current trends in pornography. Read on for insights into some of the data and trends that defined the past year. 

Before we get to the details, it’s important to keep in mind the demographics of users on the site. The largest amount of Pornhub’s traffic comes from users in the United States—and, within the US, 71% of visitors are male, with an average age of 37. So it’s not a representative sample by any stretch of the imagination. While that caveat in mind, let’s dig in:

Defined as “a genre of Japanese manga and anime characterized by overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images and plots,” hentai has maintained the top spot for another year in a row as the most-searched term across all of Pornhub’s users. Hentai porn is a sub-genre of cartoon porn, but the appeal of hentai is not yet well researched. However, in the data collected by Dr. Lehmiller for his book Tell Me What You Want, 27% of participants said they had fantasized about cartoon or animated partners before. Psychologically, individuals who have fantasized about hentai have more active imaginations, have more anxious attachment styles, and are more likely to have BDSM fantasies in general. 

In the United States, the most searched term was lesbian (and hentai was #2). Lesbian was the overall most-searched term in 2018, where it had remained for four years until it was replaced by Japanese in 2019. Why is lesbian porn so popular? One reason is that two women having sex is an extremely popular fantasy among heterosexual men. Studies find that straight men have a tendency to see female same-sex behavior as highly erotic, so it makes sense that this would be a particularly popular porn genre among male users. However, while lesbian was the 5th most-viewed category among men, it was the top-viewed category among women!

This could be due to the fact that women tend to be more sexually fluid than men. Consider this: research has found that, among persons who identify as heterosexual, women are more likely than men to report having experienced same-sex attraction and having masturbated to same-sex fantasies. In fact, in the survey of 4,175 Americans reported in Tell Me What You Want, 59% of women who identified as exclusively straight say they’d had a same-sex fantasy compared to 26% of straight men who reported the same. That said, it’s also possible that women like lesbian porn for the same reasons they tend to like gay male porn: perhaps the actors seem to be enjoying the sex more, the pleasure appears more genuine, and/or the production value and plotlines are better. This makes sense in light of studies finding that most women who watch gay male porn also watch lesbian porn. So maybe lesbian porn is just more female friendly than most of the mass-produced heterosexual porn.

The category with the biggest increase in viewership in 2022 was reality porn, which increased by +169%. Reality videos are meant to emulate “real couples” having sex, and Pornhub’s statisticians postulate that the increase in this category may be because as “amateur models have become full-time performers, the quality of their videos has improved, but visitors are still seeking a real homemade porn experience.” In the United States, the search term “real amateur homemade” increased by +310%, with individuals searching specifically for “homemade swingers” and “homemade threesome.” Perhaps the rise in interest towards reality porn is simply more reminiscent of individuals’ sexual fantasies (believe it or not, most people aren’t fantasizing about celebrities and porn stars with perfect bodies!). 

Finally, two things in the data stood out to me as ironic. First, the viewers who spend the longest average time on Pornhub are from Alabama, with an average of 11 minutes and 22 seconds per visit. Considering that lawmakers in Alabama declared porn a public health crisis in 2020, it’s interesting that their residents spent the longest time watching porn compared to residents from other states! Second, relative to other states, the most searched term on Pornhub in Utah was Mormon. I can’t help but feel that the concept of “Mormon porn” feels like an oxymoron, considering the LDS church gives members advice on how to overcome the “traps” of pornography. Then again, it makes sense when you consider that doing something taboo is one of the biggest turn-ons for a lot of people. 

Here’s to seeing how porn searches evolve in 2023. Happy New Year!

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Image Source: Unsplash/Franco Alva