January 28, 2016
Cabin fever is a well-known claustrophobic response to being stuck indoors for any number of reasons. Last weekend, as the Eastern U.S. got slammed by the record-breaking winter storm Jonas, populations in major cities found themselves restlessly looking for ways to fill their time. Some watched TV, some went sledding and others enjoyed a visit to the 59th most popular website in the United States: Pornhub.
RELATED ARTICLE: Could snow sex lead to Philly baby bump?
In a "Snowzilla" report released this week, Pornhub analyzed web traffic from January 22-24 in four major East Coast cities to determine who had the most time on their hands during the storm.
Philadelphians put up a valiant effort, but Washington, D.C. led the pack with an incredible 23 percent average increase over a typical weekend. An encouraging sign, at least locally, is that when Philadelphia bore the brunt of the storm, there was only a 6 percent jump in traffic over a normal Saturday. People were probably busy doing other productive things.
On Sunday, it was a much different story. We had what Pornhub calls an "impressive" 14 percent increase over typical Sunday traffic.
Based on a spike in desktop traffic (a device type of choice) across all three days in all four cities, Pornhub believes the statistical changes can be clearly linked to the storm.
Finally, on an hourly basis – and this may elicit a collective TMI – we can see when people tended to flock to the site most during the course of the weekend.
The NFC Championship Game did get out of hand quickly, come to think of it.