Dudes are using Insta to get lucky — something we all kinda already knew but now there’s numbers about it — according to data gathered by Sugarcookie.com.
A new survey from lifestyle site Sugarcookie.com has uncovered various ways some men use Instagram for dating, sex and porn. Over one thousand men ranging in ages from 18 to 35 years were polled about their Instagram habits, including the main reasons why they used the social media platform. The most common reasons given were keeping up with celebrities and public figures (60 percent) and because they love photography (50 percent).
Guys also reported being interested in a specific kind of photography frequently found on Instagram: the sexy kind.
According to Sugarcookie.com’s write up, 28 percent of dudes polled use Insta to find pictures and videos to masturbate to. Of those men, 28 percent masturbate to celebrities and public figures, 27 percent to porn stars and cam models and 20 percent to photos of their friends.
Some questions: Who are these over 1000 men? How were they polled? How were the questions written and the responses structured?
Though this is probably not (it’s most certainly not) a representative data grab of any specific population, even the broad age range that’s listed, it is illustrative – and that’s dang important. It would have been great to know a bit more about how the respondents were queried, as the context for exploratory, illustrative data is every bit as important as clearly defined research methods in the most rigorous of work.
All that aside, this info definitely puts some weight behind suspicions we all already have, which Sugarcookie.com founder Harriet Sugarcookie seems fully aware of, too.
“[These patterns] really shouldn’t be that surprising. Instagram is primarily a photo sharing site, and celebrities dominate the biggest accounts,” Sugarcookie said.
“Whilst only seven percent of men use Instagram for their work business, a whopping 28 percent use it to help them with their more private business. I was so surprised, it seems like a missed opportunity,” she added.
A missed opportunity for Insta I’m assuming Sugarcookie means. The notoriously sex-work/er-phobic space is certainly missing out on meeting many users’ needs by being so haterade with their uneven, inconsistent and discriminatory community guidelines and policy enforcement. But joke’s on you Insta because dudes are still jerking it to your content — ha!
Sugarcookie.com also found that many guys use Instagram for other opportunities, with fourteen percent of respondents having dated someone they met on the social network and seven percent of guys “admitting” (admitting?) that dating is their primary reason for using the platform in the first place.
“Guys are really using Instagram to get lucky,” said Sugarcookie. “It probably helps that girls way outnumber guys on Instagram, so there are a lot of opportunities on the app for single guys. The [phrase] ‘slide into my DMs’ is seen as a compliment, since most people assume you have to be confident and smooth to chat up a random Instagram girl.”
Other survey results found five percent of men have paid for sex on Instagram, and seven percent are paying for nude photos and videos via the app.
Methods and reporting issues aside — Truth: sharing this stuff would only strengthen the info gathered by Sugarcookie.com — this survey delights me to no end. I love how people, especially sex workers who are getting slashed and burned out of the internet per SESTA/FOSTA, will find work arounds in even the most totalitarian of inconsistent regimes.
