Porn Stats: Surprising Facts You Should Know

These eye-opening porn statistics reveal the true scope of an industry reshaping childhood, relationships, and culture. Updated in July 2026, we verified data from primary sources like NCMEC, IWF, and Barna. However, we tried to be careful to avoid terms and porn stats that could be triggering. (Trigger warning still unavoidable.)

On this page you’ll find a range of stats on:

• Pornography Demographics
• Social Media and Pornography
• Pornography Industry Market Size
• Business Impacts on Porn
• The Environment
• Adult Actors
• Effect on Relationships
• Porn and Children
• Church Goers
• Virtual Reality
• And more…

Contents

1. Who Watches Porn?
2. Business Impacts
3. Societal Impacts
4. Marriage Impacts
5. Effects on Churches
6. Future Trends
7. FAQs About Porn Statistics

Who Watches Porn?

Porn demographics by age and gender

• The average age children first view porn is now 12, and 15% of teens have seen it by age 10, according to a 2023 Common Sense Media study, the first national U.S. study of its kind
• A major porn site’s 2025 Year in Review notes the average visitor age is 38 years old.
• Women visitors to P*rnhub increased to 36% of total visitors in 2023, up 4% since 2019
• According to a 2025 Year In Review stat from a major porn site, the U.S. leads the world in porn use, followed by Mexico, the Philippines, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Spain, Canada, and Japan
• 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women view pornography at least occasionally, per Barna’s 2024 Beyond the Porn Phenomenon study with Pure Desire Ministries
• Among the general U.S. population, 61% of adults use porn — about 64% of men and 44% of women

Children, Social Media, and Child Sexual Abuse Material — How Kids Get Into Porn

• On NCOSE’s Dirty Dozen list is Discord’s chat and video sharing app which has over 200 million active monthly users - largely the gaming community. Lax age verification guidelines and very limited parental controls make Discord a dangerous child predator’s hunting spot.
• The BBC reports nudity, porn advertisements, and children exposing themselves in  video chat app Omegle which almost doubled in users from 34 million monthly visitors to 65 million a month between January 2020 and January 2021
• Since the 2020 BBC article which cited 689 million downloads, TikTok boasts over 1.6 billion monthly active users globally as of 2024, according to Business of Apps — making it one of the most downloaded apps in the world. TikTok regularly attracts a younger audience. It’s dangerously full of “soft” porn and easily becomes a gateway to harder-core porn
• Instagram is a leading site for grooming and child sexual abuse materials. Using Instagram is also known to cause mental health harms to children
• The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) assessed 451,250 reports in 2025; 311,610 confirmed CSAM — one confirmed case every 101 seconds. AI-generated CSAM videos increased 260-fold year over year.
• Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is growing so rapidly that the Internet Watch Foundation and others cannot remove CSAM rapidly enough.

Who actually pays for porn — market demographics

In fact, millennials and Gen Z are now the largest paying market for porn — despite the large amount of free porn available.
“They now actually make up the largest paying porn consumer base for several producers, outspending older generations substantially. All of which leads Hawkins to assert that ‘millennials may well be the saviors of the porn industry’.” — Mashable.com

• “Most viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34. This makes up over half the entire viewership. The 18-24 age bracket made up 29% of all traffic and the 25-34 age bracket made up 23% of all traffic.”
• “The 35 to 44 age bracket made up 17% of all traffic and the 45 to 54 age bracket made up 14%.” - Pornhub 2025 Year in Review

Does porn leave this world a better place for our children?

We think keeping tabs on the porn industry matters for that reason alone. We want to help you protect our future generations.

Business Impacts

Porn As A Big Business Influencer  — The Stats About Porn Don’t Lie.

If you’re a living, breathing person, your life is certain to be touched by porn.

Is porn really that big of an influencer on society? And does our day-to-day level of porn use really matter to our world? 

• The global adult entertainment market, including all types of pornographic materials, was valued at $61.79 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $112.64 billion by 2033, according to SkyQuest Research (July 2025)
• MindGeek — (rebranded as Aylo in 2023) is THE mother company of many major porn sites — is not publicly reporting their income, but as of March 2023 private equity company Ethical Capital Partners now owns them.
• Of the top 15 most-viewed websites world-wide, 3 of them are porn sites. That’s a minimum of 20% of all websites viewed globally 
• Discord, Grok, Snapchat, Steam, Telegram were exposed on the 2026 National Center for Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) “Dirty Dozen” list for lack of robust parental protections in app leading to sextortion, porn distribution, and worst of all CSAM. NCOSE’s list is updated yearly.
• According to IBISWorld, the US porn industry has grown from about $600 million in revenue in 2018 to over $1.1 billion in revenue in 2023.

According to Semrush, the top 4 dedicated porn sites drew a combined average of over 290 million daily visitors in 2026.

These reports represent a wide variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. By analyzing these billions of yearly visits and pageviews, we get a glimpse of porn’s widespread influence, especially on 18-35 year olds.

What’s missing from the data? MindGeek’s/Aylo’s revenue, quite possibly. 

Societal Impacts

Porn’s Impact On The Environment

The Smartphone — the Most-Traveled Porn Highway

In their 2023 “Year in Review”, Pornhub reveals smartphones now account for 93% of traffic to their website, up from 83% in 2021

Does porn use on cell phones contribute to global warming?

• Plastic waste — Cell phones are hard to recycle & less than 1% end up being recycled 
• Production emissions — cobalt production for lithium ion batteries uses a lot of electricity, plus the production process of the actual cell phones, estimated at 11% of emissions for Information and Communication technology (ICT)
• Mining waste — Lithium mining — essential for the batteries in every smartphone — is also harmful to the environment. America’s only operating commercial lithium mine is already responsible for drying up nearby monitoring wells, and there are currently no federal rules governing how much water any type of mine can consume. ~ The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, 2024

Sex Positivity and Porn — True or False

When violence is a sexual script commonly found in porn, can we consider this “sex-positive”? 

• A recent, large-scale UK study found scripts of sexual violence including incest in 1 out of 8 porn titles (about 12%). And that number is conservative — considering the study excluded BDSM  
• The word ‘Teen’ was a more commonly used term to describe pornography than any descriptions of sexual acts or body parts. The word ‘Teen’ was also used more frequently in sexually violent content…” (8.5%of porn titles)
• Researcher Dr. John D. Foubert reports: “Over 50 studies show a strong connection between pornography and sexual violence…
• In 2025, NCMEC received more than 113,500 reports of possible child sex trafficking — a 323% increase from 2024. Separately, of the 32,000+ missing-children reports NCMEC received that year, 1 in 7 were likely trafficking victims. The dramatic increase reflects both the growing crisis and the 2024 REPORT Act, which for the first time required online platforms to report child sex trafficking to federal authorities, finally making the full scale of exploitation visible. 

Porn Actors — Real People Harmed in the Porn Industry

The porn industry takes advantage of porn stars at the expense of their health — porn actors speak out 

Porn stars testify that they felt trapped doing types of porn they never agreed to.

Porn and Racism — Messages That Influence Generations

Another revealing study randomly selected titles from popular major porn sites. These porn stats reveal a racist slant in the porn industry.

• In these titles, “Black women were more often the targets of aggression compared to white women. Black women were the targets of aggression in 50.8% of scenes, while white women were targets of aggression in 36% of scenes…”
• “Black men were more often portrayed as perpetrators of aggression compared to white men. Black men were depicted as aggressors against women in 47.3% of scenes, compared to 35.3% of scenes depicting white men as aggressors against women…”

Marriage Impacts

Impacts of Porn on Marriage 

• Longevity of marriage — A 2016 study from the American Sociological Association shows divorce rates double with beginning porn use in marriage
• Women are more impacted by porn-related divorce rates than men:

“…people who started watching porn were more likely to split with their partners during the course of the survey. For men, the chance of divorce went from 5% to 10%. For women, that number jumped from 6% to 18%.”

• Porn’s links to sexual violence includes domestic abuse. First responders, such as police and paramedics, also note the links between porn and domestic abuse. This includes intimate partner violence (IPV).
• Women are most often the victims of sexual violence.

Effects on Churches

Churchgoers Across All Denominations — Not Immune To Porn

The 2024 Barna survey notes these concerning stats in the church:

• 62% of Christians say a person can live a sexually healthy life and regularly view pornography
• 10% of churchgoers say their church has a program to help people struggling with porn
• 75% of U.S. pastors “say they are individually ministering to those who struggle with porn”
• 67% of U.S. pastors have struggled with porn, and almost 1 in 5 are still struggling

But wait… there’s a bit of light at the end of this tunnel. 

Though disheartening, porn’s influence on the church is usually measurable by the devotedness of the church-goer.

“For example, Perry uses data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to show that, among Protestant males who are members of the most conservative denominations, the share who have viewed a pornographic film in the last year has been roughly stable for the last 20 years, at around one-third.” ~ IFStudies.org, Lyman Stone

Across all religious groups in America, people who attend religious services more frequently are far less likely to view pornography.

Future Trends

Virtual Reality and Porn — Another Major Player in the Porn Industry

In a world where virtual reality is growing in popularity and availability, gaming and virtual porn are frequently linked.

• VR porn searches are near the top of Pornhub’s own compiled customer data search list 
• The VR pornography market reached $1.006 billion in 2024, and is now projected to reach $33.1 billion by 2035 at a 38% CAGR
• Playstation consoles  - hugely popular with young teens - also generated more traffic to Pornhub: “PS5 made up 40.1% of traffic, up +77.3% from 2022.”

Future Generations — Porn and the Long Term Effects

Does porn really leave this world a better place for our children? Parents often feel dismayed and helpless if they’ve discovered their child has been viewing porn. Please check out our Resources tab for help talking to your children about porn.

We think keeping tabs on the porn industry matters for that reason alone.

Deepfake porn - the harms of generative AI

NCMEC reported AI-generated child sexual exploitation cases surging more than 64-fold — from 6,835 in the first half of 2024 to 440,419 in the first half of 2025 — according to the CSE Institute’s “Prompted to Exploit” report (March 2026), especially harming innocent victims whose faces are being used in AI generated porn videos. Victims call this a “life-long sentence”. Often, as soon as one video is removed, another duplicate pops up. The IWF’s 2025 Annual Report found AI-generated CSAM videos increased 260-fold year over year, with 65% classified as the most severe category of abuse material.

We’ve seen that from current porn stats that porn harms the world’s most valuable resources: our children, individuals, the environment, and our valued relationships.

Do you want to be a world-changer?
Lessen your carbon footprint?
Live the Golden Rule? 

Consider the benefits of quitting porn. You can regain precious time, and invest in your mental and emotional fitness.

What would quitting porn enable you to accomplish personally? 
At Ever Accountable, we believe you matter. Your goals and dreams are important. We’re here to help empower people to quit porn!

Using our simple, high-quality app and the power of human connections, accountability, and relationships, you can reach for your highest potential today!

FAQs About Porn Statistics

What age do children first view pornography?

The average age of first exposure to pornography is now 12, and 15% of teens have seen it by age 10, according to a 2023 Common Sense Media study — the first national U.S. study of its kind.

How much has AI-generated child sexual abuse material increased?

AI-generated child sexual exploitation cases reported to NCMEC surged more than 64-fold in one year, from 6,835 cases in the first half of 2024 to 440,419 in the first half of 2025, according to the CSE Institute’s “Prompted to Exploit” report.

How many pastors have struggled with pornography?

67% of U.S. pastors have struggled with porn at some point, and almost 1 in 5 are currently struggling, according to Barna’s 2024 “Beyond the Porn Phenomenon” study with Pure Desire Ministries.

How many potential child sex trafficking reports did NCMEC receive in 2025?

In 2025, NCMEC received more than 113,500 reports of possible child sex trafficking — a 323% increase from 2024. Separately, of the 32,000+ missing-children reports NCMEC received that year, 1 in 7 were likely trafficking victims.

How big is the VR porn industry expected to become?

The VR pornography market reached $1.006 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $33.1 billion by 2035, growing at a 38% CAGR.