What 2021 Looked Like For Porn Watchers — aka Pornhub Wrapped

Forget the Year of the Ox; it’s the Year of Hentai

I’ll admit it’s the least sexy video on Pornhub — even for a marketer like me.

But each year, I eagerly await the Year in Review video by Pornhub. Every month, the website gets over 234 million visitors, so they collect a lot of data and collate it to show the year's trends and habits.

And I admit data kind of turns me on.

The data apparently also helps their users as the average time spent on the site decreased by nearly thirty seconds to nine minutes and 55 seconds. They attributed this to its ‘handy search algorithm and well-curated category tags.’

Oh yeah, handy search algorithm. Talk dirty to me.

Pornhub’s 8th annual review provides a fascinating insight into the sexual trends and habits of people around the world.

So please, join me as I review what I’m calling Pornhub Wrapped — with zero apologies to Spotify.

The Year of Hentai

Many of us thought that 2021 was the Year of the Ox.

In actuality, it was the Year of Hentai. For the first time in porn history, the most searched category was hentai. It was popular worldwide, featuring in the top 10 most searched categories in almost every country in the world. It was a significant improvement on 2018 when Fortnite was the most popular.

Hentai is a Japanese word that translated into English means “perverse” sexual desire. Broadly it covers the genre of anime, cartoon, and manga pornography.

The highly exaggerated sex acts depicted in these videos bring to light many kinks and fetishes that may not be possible in reality. Psychologist Dr. Leon Seltzer believes this is why hentai is so popular. “The erotic illusions possible are freed from all the normal constraints of reality. [It] can heighten the illusion that our libido has now landed in the most idyllic place possible.”

In hentai, anything is possible.

The second most popular search term was romance. With this knowledge, I think Hollywood could make rom-coms more appealing — by adding a lot more graphic sex.

The trend that JK Rowling doesn't like

No doubt to the chagrin of notorious transphobe, JK Rowling, there was a 23% increase in viewing transgender porn.

According to Adam Grayson of production company Evil Empire, transgender porn is very profitable. “In terms of revenue per scene or movie? Hands down, without a question. Nothing even touches it. And we sell it at a price premium…because we can get it.”

The majority of porn featuring transwomen is watched by cisgender men who identify as heterosexual.

Sex and pleasure educator Luna Matatas says the rise in visibility of the transgender community gives “all genders more permission and even prompt curiosity about what we find alluring, attractive and arousing.”

To make matters worse for Rowling, Harry Potter was the 3rd most-searched-for TV or movie character. I guess people want to see if he’s a real wizard with his wand.

Women last longer

35% of visitors to Pornhub are female, which is a slight increase over the previous year. The Philippines is the only country where there are more female viewers (52%) than males, though Colombia is close with a 49/51 female/male split.

A University of Denver study found that among women surveyed, 45% said they watched porn with their partners and 32% by themselves.

Women also have a longer average visit to the website — fourteen seconds longer, to be exact. However, this doesn't mean that men watch less porn — while their average stay is shorter, they visit more often.

Coming of age

While the average of a Pornhub visitor is 37, 7% of visitors are over the age of 65. And these people are the age group that spends the longest time on the website.

Laura Betitto, the author of “The Sex Bible for People Over 50″, says that Baby Boomers are obviously still keen to remain sexual but often need more stimulation; hence they have longer visits to porn websites.

“Sex within the aging population is being talked about more, written about more, and shown more. Visiting porn sites is just another example of the increasing openness to sexuality.”

People over 65 most commonly search for “blowjob,” “mature,” and “vintage.” Most of the searches by Baby Boomers are more vanilla and less adventurous than Gen Z, who have more diverse search tastes.

Sunday Funday

The most popular day of the week to watch porn is Sunday — usually around 11 am. Fridays and Saturdays are far less popular — and married people with busy lives could drive this.

“Married people have family activities on Fridays and Saturdays. There’s no space for self-pleasuring in this narrow window. Sunday, they have more time on their hands.” says Edward Shorter, a professor of psychiatry and the history of medicine at the University of Toronto.

Another reason Sunday is popular may be due to religion.

Studies have shown that the most religious areas of the country have the highest rates of porn consumption. In addition, they have found those who try to abstain from porn due to religious and cultural pressures are far more likely to view porn.

I guess it’s another way to speak to God.

It’s a small world, after all

Winning the Pornhub Gold medal is Team USA. They are the country that visits the website the most.

The other medal winners are the United Kingdom in second place, with Japan winning bronze.

People from the Philippines last longer, with an average viewing time of 11 minutes and 31 seconds, well above the site average of 9 minutes and 55 seconds.

In terms of most viewed categories, the picture below tells 1000 words. And those words include lesbian, ebony hentai, and anal. Not your average Scrabble game.

Women like to watch gay porn

Interestingly, one study found that 37% of the views of Pornhub’s gay male porn were by females.

Sex educator Luna Matatas gives several reasons for this.

“Typically, gay male porn isn’t fueling the heterosexual male gaze like heterosexual porn. So it makes sense that women might be enjoying soaking up all the masculinity and penis action without feeling like they are watching something that isn’t focused on what they are turned on by. Depending on the type of porn, women might also feel insecure about women’s bodies in heterosexual porn and be comparing themselves — which takes away from their pleasure.”

What to do when social media crashes

Do you remember what you were doing on October 4, 2021? That tragic day in history when Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp all went down? Without those apps, what was there to do?

According to Pornhub, there was one thing that people turned to in order to get turned on. The graph highlights how much traffic increased during the outage compared to a typical day.

I’m sure they will be hoping for more outages in 2022.

Sex education

Pornhub has also become a place to learn.

‘How to’ made the top ten search terms, growing by 245% as people turned to porn stars for their education. Popular questions included searching for instructions on how to perform sexual acts, how to put on a condom, and how to find the g-spot.

Unusually people also came to Pornhub to learn calculus.

Taiwanese math tutor Shun-Wei Chang began uploading non-sexual math videos. He became a huge hit, reaching over 7000 subscribers and over 2 million views across his videos in less than a year.

He singlehandedly got the word ‘teacher’ up 14 places in search popularity. Not sure he was the sexy teacher people had in mind, but people liked his videos.

And that’s a wrap

Many more statistics, trends, and habits are covered in Pornhub’s year in review. So if you are interested in porn, stats, data, or sex, it’s well worth reading.

And then, you could also claim you visited Pornhub for the articles.

I did want to end with one statistic not covered in the review, but that is worth mentioning as I believe it’s a positive step forward.

In the past, Pornhub has been criticized for hosting illegal content. As a result, it has led to a loss of advertisers. In 2021, they published their first transparency report, stating they had removed 653,465 pieces of content identified as potentially harmful.

I think that's important. Because no matter whether you want to watch hentai or vintage porn, gay or transgender, or even Fortnite or Harry Potter porn, then it should be legal.

Come and join all the cool people on my free mailing list to get more stories and updates if you enjoyed this. And if you haven’t signed up for Medium, you can support other writers and me by joining here.