There, I said it.

Ars Technica reports on a recent study (pdf) on mobile search use. The study is worth reading on its own, but AT focuses the porn.

Less than 10 percent of all searches done on PCs these days are porn scavenger hunts, a number that is down 50 percent from 1997. As the Web has matured and more consumers have come online, porn’s percentage of searches has consistently dropped. On mobile phones, though, users are still partying like it’s 1997—more than 20 percent of all mobile queries looked at in the study were for “adult” content.

In explaining, the study suggests:

Also, we speculate that people may feel more comfortable querying adult terms on private devices. Anecdotally, we have observed that users often consider their cell phone as a very personal and private device; perhaps even more so than their computer – the probability of others discovering their search behavior (through cached pages, auto-completion of query terms orURL’S) is smaller.

A personal device that lets them be much closer to the public, like hiding your mouth then you speak.