5 Trends Exposed from Pornhub Data
What millions of searches and clicks say
“A moral point of view is a poor substitute for understanding in technological matters.”
— Marshall McLuhan
Porn remains our least understood expression. We still refuse to look at it in the eyes and make peace with its history, its current role in culture, and its future. Instead, we view it with shame, as a pathology all its own.
It’s easy to say we’re in the midst of a multi-century war with pornography, but it’s with our own humanity.
In Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America, social critic Laura Kipnis wrote,
“For all of these reasons, instead of seeking to suppress the pornographic, we might instead regard it as performing a social service: one of revealing these cultural sore spots, of elucidating not only the connection between sex and the social, but between our desires, our ‘selves,’ and the casual everyday brutality of cultural conformity.”
ZINE received access to Pornhub’s Year in Review Data Report, as well as some exclusive data, to better decode our state of eroticism, curiosity and private desire online. I’ve identified the five biggest shifts and what they reveal.
Before diving in, some ground rules:
This analysis solely focuses on statistics revealed around consumption, rather than what drives consumption, porn’s effects or sex work itself.
Like all entertainment, porn is not one medium. This data only speaks to one site. It does not reveal trends across OnlyFans, cam/streamer platforms, audio or literary erotica.
When reviewing the data — as always, we should ask, “What are its biases?” This raises questions: Does a platform and algorithm drive preference, or does preference drive the algorithm? And, are creators making what they want, or what the platform rewards?
Whether you watch, enjoy and approve of porn or not, remaining curious about what the world consumes here is critical to deepening our understanding of ourselves (fellow humans). If you’re uncomfortable even reading about porn, that’s a worthy inquiry. We don’t have to like or celebrate everything to respect it.
With that... what does the data expose?
01. The Coldplay-to-Cuckold Pipeline
On July 16, at a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts, a stadium kiss cam spotlit Kristin wrapped in Andy’s arms. Their affair was exposed... and later, so was the detail that they were coworkers.
The internet freaked out. But the commentary and memes weren’t just surface level. A cultural obsession with office affairs was seared into the collective psyche.
Since the event, searches for “cheating” and “sneaky cheating” grew +2X YoY (year-over-year), while “caught cheating” spiked +53% and “cuckold” +73%.
This might read as coincidence — until we learn that searches for “CEO” spiked +4.8X across Pornhub globally. “Boss” spiked +2.7X, “employee” +2.8X, “office affair” +3X, and “office sex” +62%.
Cultural events reliably inform our sexual fantasies. Look no further than spikes in searches for Fantastic 4, Superman and Jurassic World on Pornhub, which all also had theatrical releases this past year. Sexy Stegosaurus.
For Martin Scorsese,
“Whenever I hear people dismiss movies as ‘fantasy’ and make a hard distinction between film and life, I think to myself that it’s just a way of avoiding the power of cinema. Of course it’s not life — it’s the invocation of life, it’s in an ongoing dialogue with life.”
Current events consistently find themselves typed into Pornhub search bars. The non-erotic and erotic are interconnected, and as Scorsese puts it, always in dialogue. Porn metabolizes.
Pop culture shapes what we search for, what we search for shapes what gets produced, what gets produced shapes what we imagine, and what we imagine informs how we show up in the world. The ouroboros pleasures itself.
02. SFW & Category Collapse
What happens when Pornhub becomes so “mainstream” that visitors no longer associate it with just porn?
On Pornhub, searches for “podcast” are up +327%, “gaming” +283%, and “music” +62%.
Last year, Gen Z were over +2X more likely to search for gaming and music on Pornhub than anyone else.
While one hypothesis for this behavior could be the new “pornographic podcast” genre where pornstars eventually pivot from conversing to cunnilingus, there’s another signal that visitors are actually seeking something non-explicit...
Searches for “SFW” (“Safe For Work”) are also up +114%, “SFW ASMR” up +56%, “tease SFW” +43%, and “SFW dance” +72%.
Gen Z is also +2X more likely to search for “SFW” than anyone else.
As Pornhub itself put it, it’s as if:
“Gen Z is watching Pornhub for the podcasts, like Boomers read Playboy for the articles.”
In partnership with YouGov, ZINE found that Gen Z is the most uncomfortable age cohort discussing porn (53%), yet is the most likely to be consumers according to Pornhub’s own traffic data.
As the world’s largest porn site becomes a destination for non-explicit material, we witness category collapse. The line between “adult platform” and “creator platform” dissolves. (See: OnlyFans, which refuses to use the p-word... “porn.”) There’s a domestication. As we know from livestream cam sites where many models offer clothed company, intimacy is not just about what comes off. Presence, in itself, is pleasurable, even if performed or paid for.
03. Trans Porn: Bills Correlate with Clicks
Year over year, “trans” climbed in search frequency, now among the 20 most searched terms on Pornhub globally.
Trans porn is now the 2nd most watched category both in the U.S. and globally. The category is up five spots year over year. In 2021, it ranked 12th. As a category, Trans is now watched more frequently than MILF, Anal, Mature and Threesome porn.
In 2021, when Trans was in the 12th spot, 153 anti-trans bills were under consideration. In 2025, when 1,012 bills were under consideration, Trans found itself in the 2nd spot.
Missouri (65x) and Iowa (35x), which have the second and third most anti-trans bills behind Texas (over 135x), are +20% and +14% more likely to view trans porn than any other state. You can no longer easily access Pornhub in Texas due to age verification laws, but they’d likely over-index on trans porn too.
According to the data, men are more likely to watch trans porn, while those 45-54 years old are +14% more likely, 55-64 year olds are +25% more likely, and those +65 are +28% more likely.
Italy is +2X more likely to watch trans porn vs. the global average, while Brazil is +59%, Columbia +48%, Dominican Republic +47%, Puerto Rico +44%, Spain +42% and Argentina +34%.
What could the common denominators be, making such countries more likely than anyone else in the world to seek out this content?
Are we attracted to what’s forbidden?
The erotic doesn’t exist outside politics. Just as pop culture and porn are in conversation with one another, so is porn and politics. Prohibition relocates desire — it never eliminates it.