Jamie F
The amount of people watching ‘reality porn’ on Pornhub shot up in 2022, with the porn site’s annual data wrap-up suggesting that many porn-watchers are searching for a more realistic experience in their explicit content.
Pornhub’s ‘reality’ category saw a 169 percent rise in viewers year on year in 2022, according to the site, making it one of its 20 most popular categories.
Pornhub did not release specifics about viewer counts for categories beyond percentages, in its 2022 year in review data dump. According to Similarweb.com, Pornhub was visited a total of 2.5 billion times in November 2022.
The total amount of searches made on Pornhub containing the world “real” – such as “real orgasm” and “real couple” – grew by 42 percent year on year. Searches for the term “real amateur homemade” grew by 310 percent in the US and 179 percent worldwide.
Over the past few years many porn performers have turned to home-made content rather than pursuing more ‘traditional’ careers with porn studios. This happened a lot during Covid-19 lockdowns, when for many, working from home meant earning money through porn camming sites and platforms such as OnlyFans.
Pornhub suggests that this industry switch has led to a greater amount of better-quality ‘home-made’ porn videos ending up on the site. “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,” a spokesperson for the company says.
The site data shows that women view ‘reality porn’ 37 percent more than men, and that this category is the 12th most popular for women. It’s the 15th most popular category for men.
The trend was also reflected in Pornhub’s gay porn content. Within the gay section of the site, the ‘reality’ category moved into the top 20 most popular categories.
Transgender growth
Another notable trend was the continuing rise in popularity of trans porn. In 2022, the ‘transgender’ category became the seventh most popular Pornhub category worldwide. This was largely driven by users aged 25-34, who watched transgender porn videos 34 percent more than any other age group.
The transgender porn rise was not quite enough to topple animated porn’s stranglehold on Pornhub, though. For the second year in a row ‘hentai’ was the most popular search term on the site worldwide.
‘Japanese’ was the second most searched for term, followed by ‘MILF’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘pinay’.
No growth without ire
Pornhub seems to have enjoyed another bumper year for visitor numbers, but the site has faced struggles as legal and societal pressures on online porn have intensified through 2022.
In early December 2022 Pornhub’s TikTok account was removed from the video-sharing app, just weeks after it was announced. Earlier in the year Pornhub’s Instagram account, which had over 13 million followers, was removed.
Also in 2022 Mastercard and Visa cut ties with the huge advert network managed by MindGeek, the company that owns Pornhub, in the latest instance of financial firms distancing themselves from the brand. Meanwhile, governments around the world mull the potential for introducing strict Age Verification measures on adult sites.
Read next: India blocks Pornhub and Brazzers in ‘obscene material’ crackdown / All aboard the Boob Bus: A brief history of Pornhub (2007 – 2021)
