Coming of Age: Millennials

The Millennial generation, members of which are also sometimes referred to as Echo Boomers, consists of the demographic cohort born roughly between the years 1982 and 2000. Through a special collaboration with our friends over at Mic.com, we’re taking a look at the particular way that Pornhub’s 18-34 users interact with the largest adult site in the world. Touted by some as the most tech savvy generation to date, millennials are generally known for being glued to their phones and sharing all aspects of their lives on social media. Thanks in part to the open and rapid access to information afforded to this group by the web in their formative years, the sense of media awareness and general world views of these 18-34 year-olds truly sets them apart from previous generations in the way that they consume online.

WHAT DO MILLENNIALS WANT?

We’ll start out with a quick overview of how exactly our millennials, who account for 60% of our site users overall, typically interact with the site, compared to our older generations of viewers. According to our anonymized demographics data provided by our analytics software, millennials tend to visit the site the most between the hours of 11 pm and midnight, which is an hour later than when our 35+ users prefer to log on, though both groups visit the site the most on Mondays and the least on Saturdays. This is a trend which we noticed internationally in our Year in Review, which likely accounts for the fact that folks watch more porn to ease themselves into a new work week and rely less on the need for release as the weekend approaches.

When we did an in depth study of how our various age demographic groups interact with Pornhub, we noticed that with age comes enviable lasting power. Simply put, our older viewers tend to spend longer on site, on average, which is again affirmed in the chart above which indicates that millenials generally get the job done a whole minute faster than their 35+ counterparts. Millennials also win points in the girl power department, in that 24% of our 18-34 year old users are women, as opposed to just 21% among those aged 35+. Keeping true to the technical abilities that they are known for, millennials also use mobile devices more, but we’ll expand on this further on later in the post. Let’s move on to a look at which search terms are most popular among our Echo Boomers.

‘Lesbian,’ and ‘teen’ top the chart for the most searched terms among millennial-aged users, followed by a slew of step-relative, ebony and group sex related terms. Standing out a little more here is ‘hentai,’ which becomes even more prevalent when we examine which search terms millennials search for proportionally more than 35+ aged users. This was perhaps some of the most fascinating millennial-related data that we came across when researching for this post. As you can see in the chart below, terms like ‘cosplay,’ ‘hentai’ and ‘anime’ are 214%, 190% and 131% more searched for by millenials than our users aged 35 and up. Also more searched for by Echo Boomers are health related terms like ‘gym’ and ‘yoga,’ and they are also 48% less likely to search for ‘smoking’.

College-themed terms like ‘teacher,’ ‘party’ and ‘college’ are also searched for proportionally more by millennials, whereas terms relating to marriage and older age like ‘cougar,’ ‘wife swap,’ ‘granny’ and ‘amateur wife’ are all searched for between 25% and 59% less. Let’s now take a look at the categories most viewed by millennials.

Again here, ‘Hentai’ comes out on top when we look at the categories that millenialls are proportionally more likely to view than 35+ aged users. In the same vein, the ‘Cartoon’ category is 44% more viewed by our 18-34 year olds.

Kim Kardashian comes out on top as the most searched for porn star among millennials, joined by fellow reality star and everyone’s favorite Teen Mom Farrah Abraham (NSFW) in at 5th place. Interestingly,  ‘celebrity sex tape’ was also one of the top searched terms among this same group as we saw in an earlier chart. Stoner babe Madison Ivy (NSFW) claims 5th place – incidentally marijuana related searches on Pornhub are also significantly more popular with our younger demographics as noted in our post Up in Smoke. Let’s now take a closer look at the porn stars that Echo Boomers search for proportionally more.

Pornhub’s very own sextronaut Johnny Sins (NSFW) is 236% more searched for by millennials than site visitors aged 34 and under, as is Lindsay Lohan’s favorite costar James Deen (NSFW) at 192% more. The porn stars of yesteryear like Deepthroat starlet Linda Lovelace (NSFW) and 80’s it-girl Traci Lords (NSFW) on the other hand, are searched for considerably less than their 35+ counterparts.

WHERE ARE OUR MILLENNIALS?

When we look at which US states are home to the highest proportion of millennial-aged users, North Dakota comes out on top with 61%, followed by New York and California. These last 2 are some of the states responsible for driving the most traffic to Pornhub in the country.

It appears that New England states like New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont are home to the lowest proportion of millennial-aged users, though this is not surprising given that we have previously found that these same states are home to some of the largest proportions of our oldest viewers. Overall, there is a 10% range distinguishing North Dakota with the highest proportion of Echo Boomer viewers at 61% and Vermont at just 51%. The heat map below further illustrates where there are the highest and lowest proportions of Pornhub users between the ages of 18-34 throughout the country.

Here we have this same breakdown for the countries with the highest and lowest proportions of millennials visiting Pornhub. At first glance, it’s apparent that most of the countries with higher proportions of younger viewers are located in Asia, whereas those with considerably lower proportions of users in this same age group are located in Europe. For instance, India has an incredibly high number of Echo Boomers at 80% but we know from our more in depth coverage on age demographics that over 50% of their viewers are aged 18-24. Over 50% of India’s overall population is aged under 25 and the country’s median age is 27, to put things into perspective. Countries like Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam and South Korea also fall in the 70% range with regards to their proportions of millennial-aged viewers.

As we also saw in The Golden Age of Porn, over 25% of Japan’s population is over 65 years of age, and has a much higher median age of 46 years. This explains why their proportion of millennial-aged viewers is so low at just 48%. Other countries like Italy, Spain, Norway and Denmark also lie below the 60% average. Check out the heat map below for a global look at where most and least millennials are located that visit Pornhub.

  MILLENNIALS AND TECH

For this next portion of the article, we’re going to focus on the relationship between our millennial-aged users and technology. As previously mentioned, one of the key tenets of the generation is that its members are generally quite technologically inclined, so we’re covering everything from operating system, to gaming consoles and more. Let’s start with a general look at device usage among the group:

As we saw a little earlier on, millennials primarily enjoy their porn on the go. With 60% of traffic within the age group coming from smartphones and 7% from tablets, this means that nearly 70% of all traffic from our 18-34 year old users comes from a mobile device. Though older generations are keener on desktops than their younger counterparts, tablet use is also more popular among 35+ aged users. We further elaborated on this trend in the Golden Age of Pornhub, if you’d like to check it out. Let’s move on to browsers.

Chrome is the clear winner among Echo Boomers on desktop, far surpassing other browsers like Firefox and Safari. The most recent W3 counter stats reflect nearly the same levels of popularity in terms of overall browser use worldwide, save for the fact that Firefox is more popular with millennials in its 2^nd place position here, versus 3^rd on W3. Though Opera takes the bottom position in terms of most used desktop browser, the Norwegian browser is 65% more used by millennials than older age groups. In this same sense, Internet Explorer is 63% less used by milliennials than users aged 35 and up. On to mobile browsers.

Chrome gets knocked down to second place when it comes to most popular web browsers for mobile, where Safari takes first. Millennials use both Safari and Chrome 6% more than Pornhub users aged 35 and up but interestingly, use the Android Browser 20% and Internet Explorer 21% less. Let’s take a look at operating systems next.

This is actually quite interesting. Windows is the most used OS among millennials to view Pornhub, but they also use the OS 7% less when compared to older age groups. Mac OSX is 45% more used by Echo Boomers, though Apple doesn’t retain the same levels of popularity when we look to mobile OS.

Android wins out over the iPhone’s iOS though again, millennials also happen to use the operating system 5% less compared to older generations. They do, on the other hand, use Windows Phone a whole 30% more than their 35+ aged counterparts. We’ll move on to a breakdown of Windows version use by millennials.

Again when we take a look at the W3 stats counter, Windows 7 is the most popular operating system in the world, and it is also by far the most used version of Windows by millennials, followed by Windows 8. The more dated Windows XP and Vista are 11% and 35% less used by Echo Boomers when compared to older generations, again speaking to the relative importance attributed to keeping up with new tech among the group. Last but not least we’re breaking down game consoles.

 

The handheld Playstation Vita is 213% more used by millennials, compared to older age groups whereas they use the now dated Playstation 3 almost 60% less.

That’s a wrap on our millennial coverage! As always, we welcome your feedback and questions in the comment section below. We’ll be back with more Insights very soon, so be sure to check back regularly.

Switzerland Update

Here’s some additional data about Pornhub’s millennial visitors from Switzerland!

Swiss millennials account for 54% of traffic in Switzerland and clock in at just over 9 minutes per visit, which is 36 seconds less time than older generations there require. The gender split in Switzerland is larger than the world in general. 27% of Swiss millennials are women, but only 23% over the age of 35. The difference between generational device usage is significant. 54% of millennial traffic comes from Smartphones, whereas Swiss visitors over 35 only use smartphones 24% of the time.

The Teen, Lesbian and Babe categories are the most viewed by Swiss millennials by far, but interestingly they view the ‘Hentai’ category 508% more than our 35+ aged Swiss viewers.

Millennials in Switzerland are quite the patriotic bunch with regards to their top searched terms. ‘Swiss’ takes 1st place, but is followed ‘schweiz’ in 5th, though there is a clear affinity for the guys and girls next door as ‘german,’ ‘deutsch’ and ‘german teen’ rank in at 2nd, 11th and 13th place respectively. ‘French’ comes in at 4th and though not quite neighbors, ‘czech‘ takes the last spot at 20th.

We also took a look at the search terms that Swiss Echo Boomers are more and less likely to search for compared to their 35+ aged counterparts. ‘Tickling,’ ‘pov’ and ‘feet’ are 1491%, 1278% and 1030% more searched for by millennials here than older Pornhub users in Switzerland, as are step-relative type terms such as  ‘step sister’ and ‘step mom’. On the other hand, millennials are significantly less interested content involving group sex and/or older participants as searches like ‘granny,’ ‘mature anal,”swingers,’ and ‘swinger party’ all being searched for in the range of 33% to 502% less.

United Kingdom Update

We also took a closer look at how our Gen Y users in the UK get down with Pornhub.

18-34 year old users account for a considerable 61% of traffic in the United Kingdom and also have a higher proportion of female viewers, at 23% compared to just 20% in the 35+ group. Our UK Millennials are also use their smartphones to view Pornhub considerably more than their older counterparts, though 35+ users have an impressive proportion their traffic deriving from tablets at 24%. This reaffirms what we saw in our coverage of Porn’s Favorite Platforms, in which we observed that the UK was one of the countries with the highest overall proportions of mobile traffic.

Some more patriotism up in the isles with ‘British’ proving to be the most viewed category by our UK millennials, followed by ‘Lesbian’ and ‘MILF’ in at 2nd and 3rd. Echo Boomers here are view the ‘Hentai’ and ‘Ass’ categories 181% and 134% more than older Pornhub viewers.

Though there is a strong interest in home grown content in the UK as made evident by searches like ‘british’ and ‘british chav’ taking the 4th and 11th ranks for most searched terms on Pornhub among millennials in the UK, ‘lesbian, ‘ ‘step mom,’ and ‘milf’ take the top 3 spots. ‘Indian‘ also makes an appearance in at 16th place, likely having to do with the large number of Indian immigrants living in the United Kingdom, as noted in our UK Update.

It would appear that Echo Boomers in the UK have quite the Tiny Man Fetish with ‘giantess’ proving to be 438% more searched for by our 18-34 year olds. ‘Hentai’ and ‘game of thrones’ are also 336% and 227% more searched for by millennials here, continuing on the fantastical streak. On the other hand, millennials are less interested in videos featuring wives and grannies with search terms like ‘wife gangbang,’ ‘british housewife and ‘very very old granny’ all being searched for between 60% and 75% less.