According to Bill Tancer, the General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise, the porn industry has been overtaken by social networking for the most searches on the net lately.

In his published book “Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters“, he says that over the past decade the interest in adult-oriented sites has diminished in favor of social networking sites. A decade ago, around 20% of web-searches were for porn. This has now dropped to about 10%.

So what exactly is meant by the phrase “social networking”? How would one describe it? “Leelefever” posted the following video to YouTube to help explain it:

Tancer analyzed the information for the search activities of a representative sample of over 10 million internet users to use as his basis for evidence for the figures in his book.

The decline in searches for porn is most prevalent in the 18 to 24 year-old age group. He theorizes that younger users spend so much time on social networking sites that they simply have no time left to browse adult sites.

He said that the change in the way that people socially interact with regard to communication was a noticeable shift in society trends – a change which has mainly occurred within the past five years.

Further to the above, he also found that there is a sharp increase in searches for antidepressant drugs around Thanksgiving in the USA, in addition to tropical storms in the USA being among the top search terms.

It appears that the social networking revolution has fully taken hold. What’s your take on it?