We talk a lot about how much we watch Netflix or Disney. Yet, more than a quarter of all video streaming on the internet involves pornography. Pornhub, one of the most well-known and highly trafficked porn-streaming platforms, reported 42 billion visits to its site in 2019—an average of 110 million visits per day. Over 80,000 users reportedly visit Pornhub every minute. According to some reports, internet users in the United States access Pornhub more frequently than Twitter, Wikipedia, or Netflix. Globally, this site has almost as many visits as Amazon. According to former chief executive officer Feras Antoon, Pornhub is among the top five most visited websites on the internet, and in 2020, MindGeek—which was rebranded as Aylo in 2023 and is the company that owns Pornhub—reported receiving 4.5 billion visits per month to its various platforms, which was more than the figure for social media sites like Facebook. xHamster, another major porn-streaming platform, reported over 13 billion visits in 2019 and 1,400 videos downloaded every minute. In 2021, XVideos, yet another popular porn-streaming platform, was the thirteenth most frequently visited website on the internet.
The viewing audience on these platforms is pervasive. The results of one study suggested that 46 percent of American men watch pornography in a given week. Another study found that 91.5 percent of American men and 60 percent of American women reported consuming pornography in the past month. In Canada, 4 million discrete users—more than 12 percent of the country’s population—visit Pornhub every day, according to the company. While estimates vary, and are different for different age groups, every recent study confirms that pornography consumption today is incredibly common.
