Millennials More Likely to Look for Yoga Porn Than Prior Generations

Millennials are into this. No kidding. | Screenshot of “hot yoga” scenario from Pornhub.

Pornhub Insights, the research and analysis branch of the adult video purveyor Pornhub, teamed up with Mic and published an analysis of the habits of Pornhub’s millennial users — those between the ages 18 and 34. With 18.35 billion total visits and 78.9 billion videos viewed in 2014, Pornhub certainly has plenty of data to mine, and some of the generational differences are frankly shocking. (NSFW, obviously.)

For example, as a Gen Xer reared in a succession of Boomer institutions, I was taught that pornography could be either exploitive or empowering, depending on numerous factors surrounding its production, and that women were as entitled as men to be sexually desirous consumers of erotic imagery without shame. Not once, however, did anyone mention that such imagery might include a yoga studio or a gym, two environments that, at my age, I consider suitable only for physical punishment — and not in a sexy way.

And therein lies just one of several generational differences that Pornhub reveals with its latest research: “Yoga” and “gym” are two of the terms that millennials are far more likely to search than people over 35.

The search term with the largest generational divide is “cosplay,” which makes sense because if you’re doing cosplay and you’re over the age of 35, something is seriously wrong. Relatedly, “hentai” and “anime” appeal far more to the millennial generation, as does “emo.” Pornhub Insights also says:

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.

In terms of gender, 24 percent of Pornhub’s millennial users are female, as opposed to 21 percent of those 35 and above. This may, in part, account for the most popular search-term result among millennials overall: “lesbian.” In a 2014 study, Pornhub found that the “lesbian” category was the top-viewed by women, while it was No. 7 among men (their top-viewed category was “Teen”). Women are also more likely to search terms and categories with the word “lesbian” and with female-specific activities than men are (as in, 900 percent more likely if the subject of the video is a woman getting oral sex). Looking at the gender study and the millennial study together reveals that young women who are open-minded about sexuality (whether they’re gay, straight, queer, whatever) are now looking at porn in higher numbers — at least on Pornhub — than ever before.

As for local results, we can only assume Philadelphia is contributing to some interesting data-skewing, given that we were ranked ninth-kinkiest city in the U.S. earlier this year.

Follow @LizSpikol on Twitter.

Previously: Relax, Everyone: Millennials Are Getting Laid Plenty