Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34282505›Full record

ArticleArchives of sexual behavior2022

Porndemic? A Longitudinal Study of Pornography Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Nationally Representative Sample of Americans.

Joshua B Grubbs, Samuel L Perry, Jennifer T Grant Weinandy, Shane W Kraus

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In one paragraph

Article in Archives of sexual behavior, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
39citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

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  13. Women's Mental Health and Lessons Learnt from the COVID-19 Pandemic.The Psychiatric clinics of North America · 2023
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Joshua B GrubbsDepartment of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, 400 E. Merry Street, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA. GrubbsJ@BGSU.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-2642-1351
Samuel L PerryDepartment of Sociology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA.
Jennifer T Grant WeinandyDepartment of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, 400 E. Merry Street, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA.
Shane W KrausDepartment of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Of the many changes in daily life brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing efforts and governmentally mandated lockdowns were among the most drastic. Coinciding with these changes, popular pornography websites made some previously premium content available for free, spurring dramatic increases in traffic to these websites. This increase in time spent at home and reported increases in traffic to specific pornographic websites led to some speculation that pornography use might generally increase over the course of the pandemic and that problematic use might also increase. To test these speculations and quantify the effects of the pandemic and its associated restrictions on social behaviors on pornography use, we analyzed data from a longitudinal sample of American adults. Baseline, nationally representative data were collected in August 2019 via YouGov (N = 2518). Subsequent data were collected in February 2020 (n = 1677), May 2020 (n = 1533), August 2020 (n = 1470), and October 2020 (n = 1269). Results indicated that, in May 2020, immediately following the height of the first wave of pandemic-related lockdowns, more people reported past-month pornography use than at other follow-up time points, but less did so than at baseline. Among those who reported use in May 2020, only 14% reported increases in use since the start of the pandemic, and their use returned to levels similar to all other users by August 2020. In general, pornography use trended downward over the pandemic, for both men and women. Problematic pornography use trended downward for men and remained low and unchanged in women. Collectively, these results suggest that many fears about pornography use during pandemic-related lockdowns were largely not supported by available data.

Indexed as

COVID-19PandemicsAdultCommunicable Disease ControlEroticaFemaleHumansLongitudinal StudiesMaleSARS-CoV-2United StatesAddictionCompulsive sexual behavior disorderCOVID-19Problematic pornography useSexual media

Identifiers

PMID34282505
PMCPMC8288831

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.