Average penis length has grown — doctors call it ‘concerning’

They’re growing – and it’s showing.

The average penis length has increased over the past 30 years, a new study has revealed, but experts warn it might not be the ideal reality every man’s dreamed of.

As it turns out, size does matter: Researchers fear the phallic inflation is due to unhealthy habits, like binging junk food or being mostly sedentary, or even pollution.

“Any overall change in development is concerning, because our reproductive system is one of the most important pieces of human biology,” Dr. Michael Eisenberg, the study’s author, told Stanford Medicine’s blog Scope. “If we’re seeing this fast of a change, it means that something powerful is happening to our bodies.”

Published in the World Journal of Men’s Health, the Stanford University study analyzed data from 75 studies with over 55,000 men from 1992 to 2021, focusing on the length of an erect penis.

Researchers discovered that the average penis size had grown a staggering 24% over nearly three decades.

“Erect penile length is getting longer, from an average of 4.8 inches to 6 inches, over the past 29 years,” Dr. Eisenberg said.

While more studies are needed to confirm the findings and, if confirmed, “determine the cause” of the changes, this research’s conclusions are hard for experts to swallow.


Big and small banana on blue background
Past research has linked smaller penis size to pollution, but now experts believe toxin exposure can cause them to become enlarged.
Getty Images/iStockphoto

Dr. Eisenberg assumed to see a decline in length – instead, he found the opposite.

“Given the trends we’d seen in other measures of men’s reproductive health, we thought there could be a decline in penile length due to the same environmental exposures,” he said.

“What we found was quite different from trends in other areas of male fertility and health,” he added.

Chemical exposure from pesticides or hygiene products, he continued, could be one of the various factors causing the quick growth. Such chemicals can disrupt the endocrine system, which regulates hormones.

Past studies have claimed pollution is shrinking the peen – yet, this study may prove those findings false.

American males’ penises rank only 59th in the world, and other research has linked size to a number of social and health consequences. One study found that the larger the dong, the bigger the personality, while another concluded that men with longer members are more likely to spend big bucks on sports cars.

In 2018, a study led by Dr. Austen Slade from the University of Colorado claimed that well-endowed men were less likely to face infertility issues.

But the deep dives on penis size have been criticized for preying on male insecurities, specifically as it relates to infertility.

“We give men such a bad press all the time and the one thing that scares them is that size matters. To now to say they have a smaller chance of becoming a father is not a good message,” said Sheena Lewis, from Queen’s University Belfast, at the time of the infertility study, which found that smaller penises are linked to fertility problems.

“This is also a problem you cannot find a solution to – what can you do about it? This is a very novel idea but the study does not tell us what a normal penis length is,” she added.