Skip to main content

Govt effort to "discourage" pornography in reverse gear: India a top country with high porn viewership

Top nations attracting porn sites
By Jag Jivan* 
Adult website Pornhub, one of the many pornographic sites, which were sought to be banned by the Government of India in August 2015 through an order of the Department of Telecom, has claimed that India has the world’s third largest population viewing pornography, next only to the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Indian ban ordered the service providers to block access to 857 websites hosting pornographic content. But, as is known, the Government of India could predict the scale and level of outrage that the order unleashed, as influential sections of Indians, belonging to mainly Internet-friendly middle classes, heaped criticism and scorn on the move. The ban had to be withdrawn.
In its controversial annual report for 2015, the "popular" site says, “The United States remains at the top, with American visitors accounting for about 41% of our overall traffic, followed by the United Kingdom in at second place. India knocks Canada out of third place with a one rank position gain” over the last year.
Pointing towards the the worldwide average length for a visit to the Pornhub site, the report says, it “was 9 minutes and 16 seconds”, adding, “Over the course of 2015, this figure extended by 4 seconds, with the average session duration now clocking in at 9:20.”
It adds, “The countries with the lengthiest average visit durations also each added a few seconds their times. The Philippines remain in the top spot with visits lasting a leisurely 12:45 on average, which is 5 seconds longer than last year. The US added 11 seconds to their average time on site. India added over a minute to their now 9:30 average since last year”, the report states.
Time spent per visit on porn site: Top 10 countries
Comments the report, “The world watched a lot of porn this year. In 2015 alone, we streamed 75GB of data a second, which translates to enough porn to fill the storage in around 175 million 16GB iPhones”, though adding, “This indicates that most people are not ‘addicted’ in a way that they spend all of their time on porn, or doing little else with their time.”
It further states, “eMarketer reports that we are now spending an average of 5.6 hours online per day, up from 5.3 in 2014. The countries with the lengthiest average visit durations also each added a few seconds their times.”
The report contends that the top searches in India for the Pornhub site included Indian bhabhi, Indian actress, Indian wife, Indian college, Indian aunty, desi and Indian teen, among others. However, it notes some “interesting changes” over the last one year.
“While the vast majority of top, gaining and relative searches here contain ‘Indian,’ search terms ‘Japanese’ and ‘Indonesia’ both made some impressive leaps to get into the top 10 list with 14 and 47 place jumps respectively”, the report says, adding, Bollywood actress Sunny Leone was “the top searched” porn star.
Pointing towards what adversely affects port traffic, the report says, “Traffic dips by about 39% on Christmas Eve worldwide, with the biggest drops having taken place in France and Belgium. Smaller but still significant drops are noted on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.”
It interestingly adds, “Romania’s May Day celebrations brings traffic down by 18% while the beginning of Ramadan caused traffic to come down by 15% in India. Argentina‘s National Day on October 12th and Day of respect for cultural diversity on May 25th each brought traffic 14% below average in the country.”
---
*Freelance writer

Comments

TRENDING

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

  By Rajiv Shah   This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan*  “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah  Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative   A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

India’s green energy push faces talent crunch amidst record growth at 16% CAGR

By Jag Jivan*  A new study by a top consulting firm has found that India’s cleantech sector is entering a decisive growth phase, with strong policy backing, record capacity additions and surging investor interest, but facing mounting pressure on talent supply and rising compensation costs .

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey*  ​In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Beyond sattvik: Purity, caste and the politics of the Indian kitchen

By Rajiv Shah   A few week ago, I was forwarded an article that appeared in the British weekly The Economist . Titled “Caste and cuisine: From honeycomb curry to blood fry: India’s ‘untouchable’ cooking”, it took me back to what I had blogged about what was called a “ sattvik food festival”, an annual event organised by former Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta.