Number of porn watchers in Britain increased exponentially during lockdown

For the past year, most of us have been stuck at home with a lot more time on our hands, and some people have been putting their hands to good use.

A study conducted by the UK's communications regulator, Ofcom, has revealed that nearly half of the adult population in the country was watchingporn in the month of September last year. That’s around 26 million people! This increase in porn-lovers made PornHub one of the most visited websites, with around 16 million visits—that’s way higher than popular cable channels like Sky One, ITV4, and BBC News.

PornHub visitors

According to their figures, 50% of men were indulging in porn while 16% of women visited the adult entertainment website in the span of four weeks. These numbers increased in younger age groups where a third of women and three-quarters of men visited the website.

And while PornHub’s success only grew during the lockdown, another contender has been taking over the market—OnlyFans.

OnlyFans

OnlyFans is a content-sharing platform which is based on a subscription. People pay creators to get a sneak peek into their private pictures and videos and given the allusive nature of the platform many people use it to sell their own pornography. Ofcom also looked into how OnlyFans fared during the lockdown and they found that more people had signed up as a member. A spokesperson from the communications regulator said:

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.

LadBible reported that the number of creators on the website went from 348,000 to 1.6 million just in the past 12 months. As a result, OnlyFans recorded sales rose by a colossal 615% in the same time frame.