Online Pornography Seeking Behavior and Its Relation to Literacy Rate and Financial Status of Indian States

Abstract Background: Pornography has become widely accessible due to the popularization of smartphones and internet connectivity. Consuming pornography has multiple effects on an individual and on society. Our research question was if pornography-seeking behavior has any correlation with education and financial status in Indian states. Objective: To find the online pornography-seeking behavior of Indian internet users according to states and find its correlation with the literacy level and per capita net state domestic product (NSDP). Methods: Trends of internet search about pornography-related keywords (namely, porn, XXX, Xvideos, and sex) were obtained from a public domain https://trends.google.com/trends . State-wise relative search volumes were compared with the literacy rate and NSDP of the state. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated with the help of GraphPad Prism 6.01 (GraphPad Software, Inc., California, USA). A P < .05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Northeastern states showed a higher volume of overall online pornography searches. There was no significant correlation between the literacy rate and relative search volumes of pornography-related keywords. Overall pornography-related search volume showed a significant negative ( r = –0.49, P = .003) correlation with NSDP. Conclusion: Online pornography seeking behaviors in Indian states are not related to the literacy rate of the state. A higher volume of searches is from states with lower NSDP. The underlying factors for this finding should be explored in a future study