Based on various studies, testimonies, and information pulled from data measurement companies, there is significant evidence that people consume pornography at work. The parameters of these analyses, such as age of the consumer and regularity of consumption, however, give very different numbers. There are many ways to read the data, but all patterns suggest that many workers, and in some contexts the majority of workers, predominantly male, consume or download pornography during the workday from their office.
The Society of Human Resource Management (SHR), the world’s largest HR professional society, maintains that 70% of all internet pornography traffic happens during the workday. Pornhub, the third largest pornography site on the internet, validates this data. In their 2016 analysis of “Favorite times to watch porn,” they found that between the hours of 10 am and 7 pm, pornography consumption was above the weekly average, with a noteworthy peak around 3 and 4 pm. SHR also reports that 20% of employees access pornographic content at work, and with high-speed connections that are frequently unmatched in their homes, workers are using their offices to download pornographic content for home consumption at higher rates each year.
The Nielsen Company, a global information, data, and measurement company that holds a comprehensive understanding of how users spend their time and money, reported in 2010 that 29% of working adults viewed pornography at least once a month, with a monthly average of 1 hour and 45 minutes spent on the pornographic sites. Per session, the average user spent 12 minutes and 38 seconds. It’s worth mentioning that these statistics do not mention whether it is men or women who are spending their time on these sites, though based on plenty of evidence it is quite reasonable to assume that the 29% is predominantly male.
In 2014, another multi-faceted study was conducted with a representative sample of 1,000 U.S. men nationwide. They found that between the ages of 18 – 30, 52% of all men admitted to consuming pornography at work within the previous three months, and 14% of those men had viewed porn at least 10 times in that same period. For men between the ages 31 – 49, the numbers were significantly higher: 74% of men admitted to watching porn in the previous three months, and 20% had viewed it more than 10 times in that same period.
Put simply: for the majority of working men, the perceived benefits of consuming or downloading pornographic materials while at work outweigh the risk of losing the material benefits that come with their employment.