Mental Health
Does “forced abstinence” from gaming lead to pornography use? Insight from the April 2018 crash of Fortnite’s servers.
Open Access: Yes.
Abstract
In April 2018, the servers of the popular video game “Fortnite” crashed for 24 hr. During this period, Pornhub (a popular pornographic website) analyzed trends in pornography access, finding that: (a) the percentage of gamers accessing Pornhub increased by 10% and (b) the searches of pornographic videos using the key term “Fortnite” increased by 60%. In this letter, we discuss these observations in the context of ongoing debate regarding the validity of “withdrawal” when applied to problematic involvement in video gaming and the potential use of pornography as a “compensation behavior” during the periods of “forced abstinence” from gaming.
Relevance
When the Fortnite gaming servers were down, Pornhub reported that “the percentage of gamers (identified using affinity data provided by Google analytics) accessing Pornhub increased by 10% and the term “Fortnite” was used by 60% of people more frequently in pornographic searches. These patterns of pornography consumption were limited to the “forced abstinence” period and returned to baseline when Fortnite’s servers were fixed.” This data may indicate that pornography can serve as a problematic ‘compensation behavior’ for other problematic and addictive behaviors.
Citation
Castro-Calvo, J., Ballester-Arnal, R., Potenza, M. N., King, D. L., & Billieux, J. (2018). Does “forced abstinence” from gaming lead to pornography use? Insight from the April 2018 crash of Fortnite’s servers. Journal of behavioral addictions, 7(3), 501–502. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.7.2018.78
