Government Shutdown Leads to Pornhub Traffic Increase

As the government shutdown continues, Mashable reached out to see if the downtime has had any effect on porn viewership. Pornhub’s statisticians noted not only an increase in visits to the site, but also a distinct shift in the hours during which people are watching porn. When compared to traffic levels prior to the shut-down, weekday visits across the United States were up 5.94% from January 7th to 11th.

Pornhub’s peak traffic period across the United States is typically from 1opm to Midnight (see Fappy Hour Insights).After the shutdown began, late-night traffic increased by up to 14% above average, while early morning traffic from 9am to 10am had the smallest change.

Those fluctuations are similar to other events (see Winter Storm Stella) when people tend to stay up later and sleep in when they don’t have to go to work in the morning. Afternoon traffic increased by as much a 7% above average at 1pm, when people would typically be at work.

Average visit time during the week increased by 33 seconds (from 10 minutes 37 seconds to 11 minutes 10 seconds), further indicating that some people have a bit more time with on their hands. Visits from women were also up by 4.2% above average (see 2018 Year in Review).

In Washington, D.C., results were similar with traffic after midnight up nearly 12% and early morning traffic down from 8am to 11am. Overall, D.C. traffic was up 6.32% above average the week of January 7th to 11th when compared to D.C.’s pre-shutdown averages. Female traffic in D.C. increased by 12.3% above average.

Speaking of D.C., our statisticians noticed that some category views have increased in popularity compared to pre-shutdown pageviews.

Are these the favorite categories of government workers?

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Insights! If you find yourself with some extra time due to the government shutdown, just remember that here at Pornhub we’re always HARD at work!

About our data:
Our statisticians selected the week of January 7th -11th as it was least likely to be affected by Christmas and New Years traffic (see 2018 Year in Review). The average was taken from Monday to Friday, because many government workers would already have the weekend off (so it would be less likely to show time-of-day changes). The pre-shutdown average (for comparison) was taken from the weeks of December 3rd – 7th and 10th – 14th so that holiday traffic would not affect the results.