Canadian Scientists Shocked by the Content of Porn Sites 0 6

Those watching online porn today see scenes of physical aggression much more often than they did 15-20 years ago. This conclusion was reached by a Canadian sociologist who studied 255 of the most viewed videos posted on the popular porn site Pornhub from 2000 to 2024.

Several past studies on pornography have noted that this type of content is becoming more "hardcore," meaning it contains an increasing number of aggressive scenes. However, the authors either did not support such claims with factual observations and scientific data or relied on controversial definitions of aggression. Additionally, researchers often did not include data from the last decade, overlooking modern trends.

This prompted sociologist Eran Shor from McGill University (Quebec, Canada) to investigate the issue himself. The results of his analysis were presented in an article recently published in The Journal of Sex Research, and he shared his comments with the publication Psypost.

Together with a colleague from the university, Shor examined 255 videos from Pornhub, one of the most visited porn sites in the world, posted there from 2000 to 2024. The researchers selected the most popular clips: each had garnered at least two million views.

The level of aggression in them was assessed based on two indicators. The first — visible aggression — evaluated the presence of certain physical actions, such as slapping, regardless of whether they were performed with the mutual consent of the participants or not. The second considered only instances of aggression where the participants in the video expressed resistance to actions or signs of stress through verbal or non-verbal means, which their partners ignored. The analysis also paid attention to signs of aggression in the content titles and words.

Visible physical aggression was found in almost 44% of all the videos examined. The most common action, occurring in 39% of the materials, was slapping on the buttocks. The second most prevalent action, with a result of 10.2%, was footage where characters were pulled by their hair. Instances of aggression without mutual consent were found in only 1.6% of the analyzed videos.

By comparing videos published in the early 2000s and in the last decade based on these criteria, the scientists found that the level of visible aggression had nearly tripled during this time, increasing from about 20% to approximately 55-60%. This means that those watching online porn today see scenes of physical aggression much more often than they did 15-20 years ago.