The Trouble with Cybersex

“Do you want to know why these conservatives object to people doing sex on the internet?” asked a friend not long ago, across a dinner table, “it’s because they can’t control it. The technology defeats them.”

We had just been talking about all the claims that had been made over the years about the insidious and destructive effects of cybersex use. I had asked my friend whether he thought that there may be some truth in the theory that logging in regularly to pornographic websites and adult chat-rooms could become an addictive habit.

He thought that in some cases, it probably could. But that since much of the criticism of cybersex had come from social conservatives, the dangers had probably been exaggerated in order to clamp down on an activity that they saw as promoting “unorthodox” sexuality and a technology that they couldn’t control.

But I wasn’t so sure. I wondered whether an apparently enjoyable and harmless pastime, could lead to the kind of psychological disorder and major social disruption that some were alluding to.

The potential problems of cybersex addiction were first brought to the attention of the American mainstream earlier in the decade by the health columnist for the New York Times, Jane Brody. In an article titled Cybersex Gives Birth to a Psychological Disorder, she set out to show that cybersex was a potentially addictive habit that had affected enough people to qualify as a public health scare.

According to her sources, she said, about 40 million people in the U.S. were thought to log in to adult-oriented material on a regular basis. “For most people” she claimed “these forays into cybersex are relatively harmless recreational pursuits.” An alarmingly high number of others, she claimed had developed a level of addiction that qualified as a psychological disorder.

In support of her claim, she quoted the results of a study carried out by a Dr. Al Cooper, of Stanford University, which showed that between 8 – 17% percent of about 10,000 men and women interviewed were “at risk” of becoming cybersex addicts. Up to 1% – about 200,000 people – were thought to be so seriously addicted as to be facing serious emotional and social problems.

A number of experts in the field of sexual addiction, many of whom shared Brody’s concerns about cybersex, gave their opinions on why they thought it was so compulsive.

Dr. Jennifer Schneider, an expert in sexual compulsivity, believed that cybersex was addictive because worked in similar ways to a recreational drug. Looking at pornographic material, she said, or taking part in erotic talk in chat rooms, causes chemical reactions in the brain that create a pleasurable effect – much like a stimulating drug. Cyber-users will log in to sex websites more often, and for longer periods, searching for continued stimulation.