Covid Has Shopkeepers on Their Knees While the Porn Business Is Booming

Among the consequences that Covid-19 brought with it over the last year has been a significant increase in the use of pornographic content.

A research carried out by the institute Eumetra and Pornhub, a well-known pornographic site, have demonstrated this increase, according to the news agency Adnkronos.

As for the country where I live, Italy, since lockdown began, a large portion of the population (37%) has “given up sex,” for fear of infection or travel restrictions, in favor of frequenting porn sites. For more than 8 million Italians, porn has represented an outlet for frustration, fear, and anxiety due to lockdown.

Why One in Seven Italians Needed to “Take Refuge” in Porn in Order to Face Pandemic-Related Difficulties

We at Family and Media have previously attempted to provide a reason for why people feel the urge to use pornographic content in the article Pornography: the Problem is Relational Anorexia.

In all honesty and without placing judgement on anyone, regardless of Covid-19, it seems that the lack of authentic “real relationships” lead many to view videos in which people are treated as objects or to experience the intimate part of their lives as an “exchange of performances” instead of an indissoluble bond between two people who belong to each other – within each other’s hearts, first and foremost.

It is the lack of true self-esteem, sincere friendships, sharing, communion, and full and constructive relationships that leads individuals to fill gaps in this way.

In a nutshell, forgive my crudeness, but it’s as if people think: “If I don’t have love, I’ll settle for sex.”

Covid Has Made Porn Content Providers Richer

If it’s true that the human heart – and not the virus – is behind the spike in porn consumption, since even before the pandemic the numbers were staggering: I read that “it would take 68 years to see all the videos uploaded on Pornhub”. That said, it would be interesting to analyze the research reported by Adnkronos to understand the extent of the phenomenon and to see more clearly how a difficult situation like the pandemic has allowed those who work in the porn industry to profit on people’s loneliness.

During the spring lockdown, the traffic on Pornhub in Italy increased by 30% of daily consumption. In relation to this figure, which is indicative of the overall growth in the industry, 8% of study participants viewed pornographic websites together with their partner for the first time during the lockdown.

10% of respondents also reported viewing new genres of pornographic content.

Last year, in March 2020, in the midst of the biggest health crisis of the century, the platform Pornhub provided free access to its content.

Was it a “charitable” gesture to those who are locked up at home and frightened or a way to “console,” “alleviate suffering,” or “distract” oneself, or rather was it an excuse to “gain new users,” make them “dependent,” and then make them pay the price – literally – later for their weaknesses?

Alas, they are now reaping the fruits of what they cunningly sowed.

Many businesses have closed up shop forever, many have had to reduce the number of employees (in Italy alone, almost one million jobs were lost in just a year!), but the porn industry, unfortunately, has made a fortune.

The Courage to Defend the Dignity of the Human Being and the Physical Body

A friend of mine told me a story about a man who ran a video store years ago in Assisi. He recounted to her that after converting to Christianity and having fully understood the inherent dignity of the human being, he decided to make a clean break: to eliminate all films with pornographic content from his store.

The result? The video store began to struggle to support itself financially, but the man refused to return to his old ways. Therefore, he ended up closing.

It sounds like a story without a happy ending. My friend, who told this story to me had expected the outcome would be that God would help the video store owner double his sales. Instead, he had to change job.

But can we really say there was no reward? Or did God just reward this man in a way we humans couldn’t comprehend? We’ve got to admit that almost all video stores have closed anyway, with the arrival of the Internet and media platforms, and he would have had to find a new job in any case. But he first had the opportunity to make a strong, courageous, and enlightened choice. Who knows if others today, following his example and that of others like him, might feel the desire to give up something in order to stop exploiting the weakness of the flesh.