Facebook More Popular than Porn?

by Kendra Fujino
According to a recent article on Time.com, Facebook, and social networks in general, are more popular than those of a more erotic persuasion in the 18-24 demographic.

The study, conducted and tracked by Hitwise, a global research company, monitored which site categories were visited with the highest frequency.
These categories included pornography, social networks and e-mail sites.
Results indicate that college students and young adults may be searching for porn via Google; however, they are not necessarily accessing the listed sites.
"If you chart the rate of visits to social-networking sites against those to adult sites over the last two years, there appears to be a strong negative correlation (i.e., visits to social networks go up as visits to adult sites go down)," said Bill Tancer, author of the Time.com article and general manager of global research Hitwise.
Tancer indicated that social networks ranked first amongst the Generation Y bracket followed by search engines, web-based e-mail and at a measly fourth- porn sites.

While I doubt Hotwise's findings are any indication that 18-24 year-olds are less inclined to look at pornography online, the frequency is far less than say MySpace and Facebook or gMail even.
For the generation that spends a large portion of their time on the computer, thrice daily visits to the popular sites are not uncommon. It's a form of communication and more importantly, the all-around "Gen Y sites"- MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, e-mail, etc., can be accessed regardless of time and location.
On the other hand, porn can't exactly be accessed in public and when it is accessed, it's frowned upon.

Facebook may be more popular than porn but if someone created a social networking site where individuals watched porn, commented on it, sent each other messages and created their own flashy profile pages, I'm sure it'd be a major contender for the top spot.

Photo courtesy of Time.com