What are this year’s top porn trends?
Which country watched the most porn in 2022?
And who put porn aside during the World Cup?
Adult website Pornhub has the answers to all your questions.
They have published their 9th Year in Review, an extensive breakdown of all things pornographic in which their intrepid statisticians reveal the past year’s porn viewership, as well as the hottest trends and terms during the year of our Lord 2022.
According to their press release, their Insights team and Pornhub’s statisticians sift through data “from billions of visits to see what content defined the year.”
They also go on to state that Pornhub’s top searches are «often influenced by pop culture and other worldwide events, and many of these terms define 2022 not just on Pornhub but in mainstream media as well.»
So, clutch your pearls and marvel at their very insightful and colourful infographics – here are the key takeaways from 2022. And stay to the very end to see which fictional characters come up top and which countries prefer porn to football…
Reality tops Gender
According to Pornhub’s findings, topping this year’s trends is Reality porn.
“The Reality category grew by +169% to become one of the Top 20 categories, while popularity of the Amateur category has dropped slightly by –19%. Our statisticians theorize that as more amateur models have become full-time performers, the quality of their videos has improved, but visitors are still seeking a real homemade porn experience.”
Comparatively, the Transgender category grew by +75% to become the 7th most popular category worldwide.
Close behind these two categories are ‘Group sex’, ‘Outdoors’, ‘Positions’, ‘Feet’ and ‘Femdom’.
Most searched terms
Pornhub’s #1 worldwide search in 2022 remained “hentai”, followed very closely by “Japanese”.
Searches for “MILF” swapped places with “lesbian”, followed by “pinay” (Filipino woman) to complete the Top 5.
Top 3 countries by traffic
The US continues to be the country with the highest daily traffic to Pornhub, followed by the UK.
In 2022, France moved +1 ahead of Japan, Mexico +1 ahead of Italy, and Germany +1 ahead of Canada. Speaking of Germany, they have spent the most time per visit out of the European countries with 10min 16 secs on average…
Egypt’s rank increased by +7 to join the Top 20 for the first time, and Belgium came back in the rankings, as it last made the Top 20 in 2017.
Collectively the Top 20 countries represent 79.3% of Pornhub’s daily traffic.
You can see the full 2022 Top 20 below:
The changes of 2022
The data shows that while search terms can be influenced by current trends and differing international terminologies, Pornhub’s 100+ video categories are the same throughout the world.
These categories can give a solid indication of the types or genres of porn that people are most interested in viewing.
The big 2022 changes were the Lesbian and Ebony categories both moving up +1 to replace Japanese as the top category; threesome shot up +6 spots to become the 4th most viewed category worldwide, and Anal moved +1 past MILF to become the 5th most viewed worldwide.
They’ve even provided a handy map to see the most popular categories in different parts of the world:
Men vs Women
Via Google Analytics, the Pornhub statisticians figured out the most likely age and gender of visitors.
They state that this data is “anonymized from billions of visits to Pornhub annually, giving us one of the richest and most diverse data sets to analyze traffic from all around the world.”
The #1 categories stayed the same for both men and women in 2022: Japanese for men and Lesbian for women.
Here’s the full breakdown:
Different generations, different porn
Regarding age demographics, Pornhub’s average visitor age remained 37 for 2022, with the 18 to 24 group growing by +2 percentage points, and the 35 to 44 age group dropping by –2% percentage points.
When it comes to generational breakdowns, things get more interesting…
The study shows that Gen Z visitors aged 18 to 24 are +115% more likely to watch Threesome videos, +72% more into Cosplay and +58% more into Cartoon videos.
Gen Y visitors aged 25 to 34 are +143% more into Asian porn, +58% more into Feet and +33% more likely to view videos with Tattooed Women.
Gen X visitors aged 35 to 54 are +65% more interested in Creampie videos, +19% more into fisting and +17% more for viewing BBW (big beautiful woman).
As for Boomers over the age of 55, they’re nearly twice as likely to watch Handjob videos, and +39% more interested in Small Tits.
And if you’re unsure about what these generational categories and age groups mean, we’ve got you covered.
Movie characters & video games
The Joker’s main squeeze Harley Quinn was the most searched movie or character in 2022, followed by «Star Wars” which more than doubled in popularity from the previous year.
The favorite Marvel characters are Black Widow, Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy; the favorite DC characters are Wonder Woman and Batman.
As for video games, Fortnite continued to be the most searched for game on Pornhub, while Overwatch and Genshin Impact both moved ahead of Minecraft and Pokemon to round out the Top 5 video game searches.
World Cup stats
“Live events cause people to adjust their regular porn viewing schedule, quite often causing a drop in Pornhub traffic,” according to Pornhub.
Their statisticians took a closer look at some of the Top 20 countries to see how their traffic changed during 2022 World Cup matches.
So, who put porn aside for a few hours to watch their team play?
In the match between Belgium and Canada, nearly a quarter of Belgium’s gave up porn during the match, while Canada had only a -7% drop in Canada.
Brazil and Serbia were the most evenly matched, at least when it came to the proportion of sports fans vs Pornhub fans. Both countries had a –40% drop in traffic while their teams played on 23 November.
Australia’s traffic increased by +6% during their match with France, but Pornhub’s statisticians theorize that because the match took place at 6am, more people were awake during a normally low traffic time of the day, it increased the likelihood of people visiting Pornhub.
Traffic in the US was flat (-0.2%) during their match with the UK, where traffic decreased by –13%. Pornhub’ statisticians chalked that up to the Black Friday Effect, as more people may have been online shopping during that time.
For a complete and impressively in depth breakdown of countries, habits and age groups and many other categories, head over to Pornhub’s 2022 Year in Review here.
Additional sources • Pornhub Insights