Sexting: Are People Doing It More Than They Are Hooking Up?

Culture

People have been googling sexting. A lot.

Google may be one of the best political and social barometers of our lifetime, offering us authoritative information on pretty much every human behavior.  Because people are spending a majority of their time online, whatever they are googling is a pretty good indicator of what they are doing.

It seems that there is a new found interest in sexting and that it has become a more popular google search than other activities humans love to do. Google Analytics shows that people are performing Google searches about sexting more than about tweeting, chatting, emailing, partying, dieting, exercising, and yes, even hooking up. Sure, you could argue that Google Analytics can only offer us a partial glimpse of human behavior because one rarely stops to google the word "hooking up" when they are about to hop into a cab with with a one-night stand.

Still, this is still pretty darn interesting.

Check out this graph on Buzzfeed to see the relationship between searches for dieting and sexting. Dieting remains an activity many people seek information about, so you would expect it to at least compete with sexting. Alas, it does not.

Here's Buzzfeed's graph describing the relationship between google searches for sexting and hooking up:

As you can see, sexting seems much more popular than hooking up? Are these informative searches, or are people really preferring texting to, well ... you know. Maybe it's because on of them doesn't involve a walk of shame?

Could sexting eventually make hooking up extinct? 

Let me know what you think on twitter: @feministabulous