PornHub is offering free subscriptions to everyone quarantined in Italy during the coronavirus outbreak

  • PornHub is now offering people in mandated quarantine in Italy free premium subscriptions until April 3 as a way to help them cope with being cooped up inside indefinitely.
  • The platform is also donating profits from its ModelHub platform to Italy's coronavirus containment efforts.
  • Staying inside for long periods of time can lead to feelings of irritability and sadness, but virtually connecting with humans can help.
  • Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

PornHub is now offering people in mandated quarantine in Italy free subscriptions to its site as a way to help them cope with being cooped up inside indefinitely.

The free subscriptions will be available until April 3, providing those who sign up with access to the site's premium content, the Daily Mail reported. PornHub also said that they'll be donating money from its ModelHub platform, where erotic creators can sell their content, to Italy's coronavirus containment efforts.

"Forza Italia, We love you! PornHub has decided to donate its percentage revenue from ModelHub platform from March to help Italy during the outbreak," the PornHub press release read.

As of Thursday, March 12, Italy's death toll from the coronavirus outbreak was 631, and there have been at least 10,000 reported cases of COVID-19. This makes Italy the second-most affected country after China, and spurred government officials to enact a country-wide lockdown of its 60 million citizens to prevent further coronavirus spread.

If people in Italy break the mandated quarantine, they could be fined or arrested, Business Insider previously reported.

Connecting virtually could help mitigate the negative effects of quarantine

But staying in inside for so long can lead to stir craziness, or feeling irritable, sad, or frustrated, from having limited human and outside contact.

"If we think about loneliness as this adaptive response kind of like hunger and thirst, it's this unpleasant state that motivates us to seek out social connections just like hunger motivates us to seek out food," lead study author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, previously told Insider. 

Holt-Lunstad said that connecting virtually with others could help mitigate some of these negative effects because video chats "maintain those connections without potentially putting ourselves at risk of being exposed to the virus."

It's possible, then, that watching porn could help generate virtual human contact, in addition to spending time with those you're quarantined with, to make the experience less anxiety- and depression-invoking.

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