Porn’s Effect on the Environment

You may have heard about the many effects of watching porn, such as how it can impact personal relationships, cause or worsen mental health issues, and increase the demand for sex trafficking.

But there’s another reason worth considering to avoid porn: because it’s bad for the environment.

You’re probably thinking that’s a bit of a stretch. With most porn online, how is it hurting the environment? Allow us to explain.

Streaming and the Environment

Streaming videos online is more environmentally-friendly than picking up a movie at the video store. Streaming services are able to cut out all the physical materials involved in making a DVD. And while streaming is considered more “green,” it still uses a significant amount of energy.

When you use the internet, you still need energy to cool the servers as well as maintain the devices you use in your home, such as:

• Modems
• Routers
• Smartphones
• Laptops
• TVs

And with that in mind, consider how much porn the world consumes. In 2019, Pornhub — the second-largest porn site in the world — uploaded more than 1 million hours of new content and had 42 billion site visits. These numbers are staggering, and remember, Pornhub is just one porn site out of so many.

So how do they impact the environment?

Porn and the Environment: The Research

As we mentioned, while streaming videos is typically better for the environment than purchasing them in hard copy format, porn would be the exception — simply because it’s streamed much more than it was ever purchased on disc. But how much energy does watching porn consume?

Indiana University researcher Nathan Ensmenger decided to find out. He made some calculations using a formula that details Netflix’s energy usage, as well as some statistics about porn use.

Ensmenger came to the conclusion that, assuming Pornhub and Netflix stream videos with the same energy efficiency, Pornhub would have used 5.967 million kWh in 2016. That number is now a lot more now, considering that between 2016 and 2019, visits to the site increased by more than 19 billion. And in 2021, it’s presumed that number of site visits has increased further.

And, again, that’s just one porn website. There are many, many more, like Pornhub’s rival, XVideos, who claims to have 2 billion site impressions a day.

How Does This Affect You?

It’s hard to calculate the exact amount of energy it costs for websites to show pornographic materials via the internet. Still, we can see that porn websites use an exorbitant amount of energy to stream videos.

In a world where many strive to be more aware of how their habits, choices, and consumption impacts the environment, anyone can add not watching porn to their list of energy and resource-conserving goals.