Revealed: The world's guilty online pleasures

  • 21/06/2018
India, Egypt, Ethiopia and Tanzania were revealed as some of the world's top porn-watchers.
India, Egypt, Ethiopia and Tanzania were revealed as some of the world's top porn-watchers. Photo credit: Getty

New Zealanders really enjoy testing their knowledge online, according to a revealing report.  

Kiwis came out unscathed in website reviews.org's look at 112 countries' most embarrassing online guilty pleasures. It found that while some countries were obsessed with seemingly innocent pastimes like cat videos, others were going hard on dating apps and adult content. 

New Zealanders can't get enough of BuzzFeed quizzes, the report claims, suggesting which Hogwarts house you belong to or which Disney princess you most closely resemble is a popular conversation starter in Aotearoa. 

To determine each country's online guilty pleasure, review.org made up a list of indulgent topics people can search for on the internet and cross-referenced that with Google Trends search data. 

New Zealand's most common online guilty pleasure turns out to be online web games and quizzes, alongside South Korea, Myanmar and Nepal. Australians on the other hand seem to be obsessed with bitcoin and online investment, along with Turkey, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. 

Kiwis came out unscathed in website reviews.org's look at 112 countries' most embarrassing online guilty pleasures.
Kiwis came out unscathed in website reviews.org's look at 112 countries' most embarrassing online guilty pleasures. Photo credit: reviews.org

Our cousins in the UK and US consult online symptom checkers like WebMD quite often, whereas people living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Italy, Norway, China, Romania and Slovakia seem to love a good conspiracy theory. 

As for the rest of the world, Russia and some Eastern European countries can't get enough of playing The Sims, while other online games appear to have Swedes and Germans hooked.  

World of Warcraft has approximately 41,378,754 players on European servers, according to realmpop.com, so it's no surprise that mostly European countries such as Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany and Sweden can't get enough of the game. 

But some Eastern European countries, alongside those in the Middle East and central Asia, are obsessed with Minecraft, including Azerbaijan, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Moldovia, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine. 

But when it comes to online dating apps like Tinder and Grindr, it's the Spanish-speaking countries that can't get enough. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Spain and Uruguay all love to swipe. 

As for the most guilty online pleasure, a surprising handful of countries seem to enjoy streaming online adult content. India, Egypt, Ethiopia and Tanzania were revealed as some of the world's top porn-watchers.  

Hopefully the results have left some people feeling less ashamed about their own "guilty" online habits. 

Newshub.