Some publications have reported Utah as having the highest rate of pornography usage in the country but data suggests just the opposite.
Happy Wednesday. Today’s temperatures: Logan: 42 - 73° ⛅ | ⚠️ Salt Lake City: 53 - 80° ⛅ | ⚠️ St. George: 52 - 80° ⛅ | 10% 💧 ⚠️ Flood Watch Utah was ranked the #1 state in the country by U.S. News and World Report this week. Here's what Gov. Spencer Cox had to say. In addition to leading in health care, infrastructure and education, Utah ranked number one in the categories of economy and fiscal stability. However, the state ranked near the bottom in terms of air and water quality. Tell me: Why do you think Utah is the best place to live in the country? Does it have to do with the economy, or something else? How does the state's high levels of pollution affect you? We may just include your response in a future Utah Today! Also on our mind: Could artificial intelligence destroy the planet, Pornhub reacts to Utah legislation by blocking access to the site and "The Chosen" seeks to stream the series in U.S. prisons. |
| The narrative is Utah leads the nation in pornography consumption. Data tells a different story |
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| | News of Pornhub’s recent retaliation against Utah has once again surfaced the incorrect narrative that Utah leads the nation in per capita porn consumption. While publications in the past have reported Utah as having the highest rate of pornography usage in the country, this narrative appears to be based on a single nearly 15-year-old study about “subscriptions” to a website. The narrative of Utah residents consuming the most pornography emerged from the research report produced by then-Harvard Business professor Benjamin Edelman using data from 2008 or earlier. Edelman looked at zip codes from credit cards which an anonymous adult entertainment site gave him access to and said Utah had the most subscriptions out of any state in the country. When Edelman published the research, he told the Deseret News, “one possibility is that Utah consumers find it difficult to obtain their desired adult entertainment through retail purchases. … As a result, Utah residents may be buying online (hence appearing in my dataset), whereas people elsewhere buy retail (hence not in my dataset).” This narrative is further complicated by numerous other studies. For example, Pornhub’s own statistics from 2013 showed Utah ranked 40th in the U.S. in terms of page views. And according to an article in Cyberpsychology, when the data is controlled for broadband internet access, Utah ranks last based on Pornhub’s own data. Unfortunately, the narrative about Utah’s porn consumption is often used to portray religious conservatives as hypocritical about their sexual ethics. However, data from a single company doesn’t tell the whole story and when the data is taken together, it seems Utah residents have a lower pornography consumption rate than residents of other states. |
Read more about how Utah compares to the rest of the country in pornography consumption. |
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