India Under Lockdown Turns To Porn: Pornhub Reports 95% Surge From India

Bypassing the government ban on porn sites, people in India have increased the consumption of adult movies on Pornhub, one of the most popular pornographic websites, thanks to the nationwide lockdown and the free access of premium content.

According to Pornhub’s recently published data, the porn site witnessed a 55% surge on day one of the 21-day lockdown as compared to the traffic registered by the company on an average day.

The California-based company also noted that the traffic started to increase considerably from March 8. It is worth noting that this was the time when most of the private companies and startups in India started to either provide work for home or paid leaves to the employees.

Interestingly, the surge in the traffic continued on all days after the lockdown was imposed. During the same period, Pornhub also unlocked the premium version of the library for all the users globally.

“Stay home and help flatten the curve! Since Covid-19 continues to impact us all, Pornhub has decided to extend free Pornhub Premium worldwide until April 23rd. So enjoy, stay home, and stay safe,” Pornhub said on March 24.

After offering its premium content for free, Pornhub was expecting a further surge in the traffic from India and Indians surely responded well as the porn site witnessed a 95% hike on March 27. Besides India, Pornhub also witnessed a spike in traffic from some of the countries which have been impacted the most due to the pandemic including the US, Italy, and Spain.

Time To Lift India’s Porn Ban?

For Pornhub, India has remained one of the key markets. However, a 2018 government clampdown on porn sites also restricted the access of Pornhub on many telecom and internet circles.

Currently, around 827 websites have been banned by the government. However, the restriction is limited to certain circles of telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. Previously, Pornhub said that 91% of Indians still visit the porn site from their mobile phones.

In a previous report, Pornhub also noted that the largest proportion of millennials visiting the site making up 85% of the traffic generated by the country. Moreover, many people also use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access most of the banned porn sites.

So, rather than enforcing a soft ban, the government should reconsider its decision to block these websites. Further, in situations like Covid-19, the upliftment of the ban will help people to get another source of entertainment which will prevent them from going outside amid lockdown.