Jason, a thirty-year-old self-employed electrician, is a soon-to-be divorced father of two young children. He says that after his kids were born, his wife was always either too tired for sex or just plain not interested in it. When he complained about this to a fellow electrician he’d known for a number of years, his friend suggested that he check out the Tinder hookup app. Before long, he had profiles on five different apps, and he was spending more time hooking up with strangers than managing his shop. Within a year, he had fallen behind on the mortgage and in paying his many suppliers. “I started lying to my wife, too, telling her I was working late when I was really hooking up.” Eventually, his wife got suspicious and checked his phone to see what she could find. And she found quite a lot. “There were nude pictures of me and a lot of the women I was hooking up with and text messages setting up all sorts of encounters. And that was it for her. She immediately took our kids and left me. Now she wants a divorce. The worst part is that even with all this pain, and her hurt, I still can’t stay away from those apps.”
In the twenty-first century, digital technology is omnipresent. At this point, nearly everyone in modern Western culture either owns or has easy access to a computer, laptop, tablet, pad, smartphone, or some other Internet-enabled digital device. As a result, we now have 24/7, anytime, anywhere access to information, entertainment, and social interaction—with much of that material and interconnectivity being sexual in nature. Today, nearly a billion people daily log onto Facebook and similar social media on a daily basis to catch up with family, friends, and to stay connected. For the vast majority of people, this is not an issue. They are able to play with and enjoy cybersexual activity in healthy ways, without becoming addicted or experiencing negative consequences, just as most people are able to casually enjoy things like alcohol, gambling, video gaming, and recreational drugs without becoming addicted or experiencing major problems. However, for people vulnerable to addiction and psychological disorders, sexnology (i.e., sexual technology) can be as much a danger zone as any other potential addiction.
As a therapist who primarily treats sex and romance addicts, I initially noticed tech-related issues in the early 1990s, when online bulletin boards (BBS) and porn sites first hit the web. Prior to that, my clients were mostly hooked on real-world sexuality: serial affairs, prostitutes, sex clubs, and adult movie theaters, plus the occasional guy hooked on phone sex (the old-fashioned kind of phone that plugged into the wall). But when home computers and ubiquitous Internet connections came along, my clients were suddenly and primarily engaging in tech-driven sexuality. And this tech-sex trend continues unabated, with current-day sex addicts hooked on digital pornography, virtual sex games, webcam sex, hookup apps, teledildonics (devices that offer a long-distance imitation of mutual sex), and whatever else R&D departments can dream up.
Furthermore, as both scientific research and anyone who’s been treating sex addicts for more than a decade can tell you, with every advance in digital technology, more and more people are challenged by sexual addiction. Consider that studies conducted in the 1980s (pre-Internet) generally suggested that anywhere from 3 to 5 percent of the adult male population was sexually addicted.1 By 1999—still the very early days of Internet usage—that percentage had approximately doubled, to 8.5 percent.2 Fifteen years later we don’t have an updated percentage from researchers, but anecdotal evidence strongly suggests the number is still climbing. Either way, it is clear that digital technology both leads to and facilitates sexual addiction. In short, as digital technology has increased our highly affordable, mostly anonymous, nearly instant access to potentially addictive sexual imagery, activity, and partners, sexual addiction has become more problematic and widespread. Today, it would be difficult to find even a single sex addict who hasn’t been involved in some way with sex online, as it is just so easy to access.
Cybersex Variations
Online porn is the “industry leader” when it comes to cybersex addiction. This is hardly a surprise, given the recent online porn explosion. And no, I’m not exaggerating when I use the word explosion. In their 2011 book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts, researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam write:
In 1991, the year the World Wide Web went online, there were fewer than 90 different adult magazines published in America, and you’d have been hard-pressed to find a newsstand that carried more than a dozen. Just six years later, in 1997, there were about 900 pornography sites on the Web. Today, the filtering software CYBERsitter blocks 2.5 million adult Web sites.3
Of course, pornography is merely the tip of the “sexnological” iceberg. In today’s world it is possible to meet someone on a dating site or a hookup app, to flirt with that person via text and sext, to have virtual sex with that person via webcam, and then brag about this hot new relationship on social media—all without ever being in the same room with that person (or even the same country).
Hookup apps in particular are problematic for addicts, primarily because they present an entire universe of readily available potential sexual partners, helpfully arranged, thanks to geo-locating software, from nearest to farthest away. And a person’s marital status, hobbies, job, religion, goals, and worldview don’t matter on these apps because they’re all about the quick encounter. No muss, no fuss, just the sex, thank you very much. Many cybersex addicts, such as Jason in the example above, post profiles on multiple apps simultaneously, staying logged in to all of them 24/7, checking them constantly. Some looking for the next sexual encounter before they’re even done with the current one.
Sexual Evolution?
1985: Michelle, a single twenty-eight-year-old events planner, was feeling lonely one evening. Hoping to meet Mr. Right (or at least Mr. Right Now) she showered, did her hair, put on makeup, spritzed herself with perfume, and put on a slinky black dress. Then she walked downstairs from her second-floor apartment, hailed a cab, and took an expensive ride to a singles bar on the other side of town (not wanting any of her friends or neighbors to see her
and figure out what she was up to). At the club, she bought herself a couple of overpriced drinks and waited for a decent-looking guy to display interest in her. Several men offered to buy her a drink, but none of them was her type. Eventually, dejected and depressed, she left the bar and took the long cab ride home.
2016: Michelle, a single twenty-eight-year-old events planner, was feeling lonely one evening. Hoping to meet Mr. Right (or at least Mr. Right Now), she pushed some popcorn into the microwave and logged on to her Tinder smartphone app. She noticed a cute guy right away. She swiped his profile to indicate interest, and before her microwave popcorn was ready she was texting with him. Twenty minutes later he arrived at her doorstep, happy to share her popcorn, a movie, and a little bit more. No hours of preparation, no expensive cab ride or overpriced drinks, no parade of losers, no sore feet and ankles from standing around in high heels for three hours, and no disappointment at the end of the night. “Cute guy” was gone by 11:00 pm (in time for her to catch the late news) at her request. Easy!
In today’s digital world, Michelle benefits from the Internet’s “Triple-A Engine”4: Accessibility, Affordability, and Anonymity. For twenty-first century Michelle, digital technology removed the barriers to romance and sexuality that once existed. Thus the incredibly limited across-town dating pond of yesteryear is now transformed into a veritable ocean of opportunity. Instead of wasting her night, hoping to get laid, she quickly and easily located the connection she was seeking. And she is hardly alone in her approach.
In today’s world, practically everyone who’s interested in meeting a potential romantic or sexual partner is looking online. Men and women, gay and straight, young and old—they are all searching for someone, and they’re nearly always conducting that search in the digital universe. And this is hardly a U.S.-based or even an English language phenomenon. For instance, eHarmony, a dating website launched in 2000, now has members in 150 different countries.5 And the dating websites that dominated the mid-2000s currently seem like antiquated small potatoes. In fact, the online romance and sex scene didn’t truly take flight until 2009, with the advent of dating and hookup apps.
The first dating/hookup app was Grindr, geared toward gay men seeking sex and/or romance (but mostly sex). Almost immediately that app went wild, and within a few short months of its launch the marketplace was littered with knockoffs geared toward every demographic imaginable. These days, whatever it is that you’re looking for, there’s an app that will help you find it. And an astounding number of people are taking advantage. For instance, Tinder, a relative latecomer to the “adult friend finder” scene (launched in August 2012), in 2015 has more than 50 million users, and they’re swiping at other members’ profiles 1.5 billion times per day.6 (That’s “billion, not million, per day,” not year.) People today searching online for romantic and sexual content and contacts aren’t tethered to an actual computer, as mobile devices are more functional—maybe even preferable—when it comes to online dating and mating.
Put simply, the amount and variety of intensely sexually arousing imagery and activity now available via digital devices is nearly endless, with new sexnologies (and for addicts, new forms of sexual acting out) arise almost daily. And thanks to the advertising-based business model initially employed by newspapers, TV, and radio, nearly all of this sexual content and activity is either free or low-cost, meaning almost anyone can instantly, affordably, and relatively anonymously access this endless stream of sexual content and potential partners 24/7/365.
Cybersex addicts find the anonymity that can be obtained online especially appealing, as it lets them be sexual in ways that do not put them at risk for arrest, shame, public embarrassment, and other consequences, as did many of yesteryear’s analog sexual environments with less risk of discovery (and therefore intervention) by spouses or others who may be affected by their addiction. Thanks to the anonymity and secrecy provided by digital technology, cybersex addicts can find and experience about anything they want online—without their families, friends, employers, neighbors, or anyone else in their lives knowing what they’re up to.
What Is Cybersex?
The most typical online/social media driven sexual behaviors are listed below. Note that being involved with any one or more than one of them, even on a regular basis, is not indicative of a problem, but when these experiences are abused to the point where they become all-consuming, interfering with day-to-day life, their abuse indicates evidence of a clear problem:
√ Casual and/or anonymous sexual hookups facilitated by dating, prostitution, and hookup websites, and apps
√ Sexting, texting sexual content and/or video sex chats
√ Searching for sexualized imagery and/or potential sex partners on social media sites
√ Sexting (sending and receiving overt sexual images) with or without masturbation
√ Seeking (or selling) sexual favors via websites like Craigslist and Backpage, and also on more traditional dating and hookup websites and apps
√ Searching for and hooking up with PNP (party and play) partners via websites and apps (drugs and sex)
√ Seeking and engaging in marathon sex and/or group sex, with partners found via websites and apps
√ Online exhibitionism and voyeurism via webcam, often on chat sites that randomly pair chat partners (such as Chatroulette and Omegle)
√ Teledildonic masturbatory devices that warm, lubricate, pulse, and grip in tandem with sexual activities taking place onscreen (such as porn videos or even via live webcam performances)
√ Virtual-reality sex games that allow users to create customized fantasy avatars (animated selves) then used to participate in interactive online sexcapades
√ Online porn in all forms: webcam, video, anime, prostitution, images, etc.
The Face of Pornography Addiction
Franklin is a single, twenty-eight-year-old insurance claims adjustor. Every morning he wakes up and the first thing he does is masturbate to online pornography. He actually keeps his iPad on the nightstand next to his bed for easy access. As Franklin’s day progresses, so does his porn use. He even watches porn on his iPhone while he’s driving. “I actually love looking at videos in the car because it feels dangerous and forbidden, and that adds to the excitement. Sometimes I even masturbate while I’m driving.” He admits that he’s gotten several tickets for erratic driving but says he’s always managed to switch his phone off and zip up before a police officer or anyone else can actually catch him in the act. After work, Franklin usually orders pizza or takeout Chinese from a place near his apartment, and then he watches several hours of porn beamed wirelessly from his iPad to his 55-inch flat-screen TV. “My goal is always to find the one perfect video that I haven’t seen before,” he says. “And usually even a so-so new video is better than a really good one that I’ve seen a few times.” On an average day, Franklin spends at least three or four hours looking at and masturbating to digital pornography. Sadly, most days his entire compliment of social interaction occurs solely at either work or while buying food. As such he can go long periods without any other kind of live human connection at all.
The Internet is rife with porn of every ilk imaginable, and people of every age, race, religion, gender and sexual orientation are viewing it. Research suggests that approximately 12 percent of all websites offer pornographic content, and 35 percent of all downloads involve erotic content.7 And frankly, the amount of currently available (mostly free) online porn increases by the minute, thanks primarily to user-generated imagery (sexts, webcam mutual masturbation sessions, etc.) Furthermore, the barriers to accessing porn that once existed—cost, proof of age, etc.—are no longer in play. Today, all a person who’s interested in porn needs to do is find a porn site and start clicking. So it’s hardly a surprise that porn addiction is among the most common forms of sex/cybersex addiction.
Many porn addicts couple their porn use with compulsive masturbation and/or various forms of non-intimate partner sex such as webcam sex, sexting, anonymous sex, casual sex, affairs, use of prostitutes, exhibitionism, voyeurism, etc. That said, porn addiction is often a stand-alone form of compulsive sexuality.
Generally speaking, porn addiction occurs when an individual consistently loses control over whether he or she views and uses pornography, the amount of time he or she spends with pornography, and the types of pornography that he or she uses. Research suggests that in today’s world most porn addicts spend at least eleven or twelve hours per week looking at (and usually masturbating to) pornography, most often digital imagery accessed via their computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, or some other Internet-enabled device!8 (Magazines, VHS tapes, DVDs, and other “traditional” forms of pornography are still in use, but the vast majority of porn addicts prefer the anonymity, affordability, and 24/7/365 accessibility that digital technologies provide.) And this eleven or twelve hours per week number is the low end of the spectrum. Many porn addicts devote double or even triple that amount of time to their addiction.
Common signs that casual porn use has escalated to the level of addiction include:
√ Continued level of porn use remains unchanged despite consequences and/or promises made to self or others to stop
√ Escalating amounts of time spent on porn use
√ Hours, sometimes even days, lost to searching for, viewing, and organizing pornography
√ Masturbation to the point of abrasions or injury
√ Viewing progressively more arousing, intense, or bizarre sexual content
√ Lying about, keeping secrets about, and covering up the nature and extent of porn use
√ Anger or irritability if asked to stop using porn
√ Reduced or even nonexistent interest in real-world sex and relationship intimacy
√ Male sexual dysfunction (erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, inability to reach orgasm)
√ Deeply rooted feelings of loneliness, longing and/or detachment
√ Drug/alcohol abuse in combination with porn use
√ Drug/alcohol addiction relapse related to porn use or feelings about porn use
√ Increased objectification of strangers, viewing them as body parts rather than people
√ Escalation from viewing two-dimensional images to using the Internet for casual/anonymous sexual hookups, paid sex, etc.
Sadly, porn addicts are often reluctant to seek help because they don’t view their hidden, often shameful solo sexual behaviors as an underlying source of their unhappiness. And when they do seek assistance, they often seek help with addiction-related symptoms—depression, loneliness, and relationship troubles—rather than the porn problem itself. Many attend psychotherapy for extended periods without ever discussing (or even being asked about) pornography or masturbation. Either it feels too shameful to them to even talk about, or they simply don’t see the correlation between their porn use and the problems they’re having in life. As such, their core problem remains underground and untreated.
Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction
As you may have noticed in the above list of potential consequences of porn addiction, male porn addicts sometimes experience sexual dysfunction related to their porn abuse. In fact, erectile dysfunction (ED), delayed ejaculation (DE), and inability to reach orgasm (anorgasmia) are all increasingly documented consequences of pornography abuse. One 2012 survey of 350 self-identified sex addicts found that 26.7 percent reported issues with sexual dysfunction.9 Similar studies, smaller in scale, show comparable results. One such study, looking at twenty-four male sex addicts, found that one in six (16.7 percent) reported erectile dysfunction.10 Another, this one looking at nineteen male sex addicts, found that eleven of the nineteen (58 percent) reported some form of sexual dysfunction.11
Put simply, growing numbers of physically healthy men, including men in their sexual prime, are suffering from sexual dysfunction—typically with real partners rather than with porn—and their dysfunction is directly related to their abuse of online pornography. Furthermore, this issue is not entirely due to the frequency of masturbation and orgasm outside a primary relationship (i.e., the need for a sexual refractory period in which males “reload,” so to speak). In reality, the problem is increasingly related to the fact that when a man spends 70, 80, or even 90 percent of his sexual life masturbating to online porn—endless images of sexy, exciting, constantly changing partners and experiences—he is, over time, likely to find his real partner(s) less sexually stimulating than the visuals parading through his mind. As such, the digital porn explosion has created in some men an emotional/psychological disconnection that is manifesting physically as sexual dysfunction with real partners.
In their paper, “Evaluation and Treatment of Sex Addiction,” Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, Patrick Carnes, and Suzanne O’Connor state the matter rather clearly, writing that “Sex addiction patients are generally not good at sex. They function poorly in the bedroom. Sex addicts feverishly pursue their dysfunctional sexual behaviors yet generally have sexual difficulties with intimate partners. . . . Premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction [and] anorgasmia . . . are common.”12 And this is most apparent when sex addicts are hooked primarily on pornography.13
Possible signs of porn-induced male sexual dysfunction include:
√ A man is able to achieve erections and orgasms with pornography, but he struggles with one or both when he’s with a real-world partner.
√ A man is able to have sex and achieve orgasm with real-world partners, but reaching orgasm takes a long time and his partners complain that he seems disengaged.
√ A man is able to maintain an erection with real-world partners, but he can only achieve orgasm by replaying porn clips in his mind.
√ A man increasingly prefers pornography to sex with a real partner, finding it more intense and more engaging.
The simple, sad truth is that, thanks to heavy porn use, growing numbers of men are suffering from sexual dysfunction, be it ED, DE, and/or anorgasmia. Even worse, male sexual dysfunction affects not just men, but their romantic partners. After all, if a guy can’t get it up, keep it up, or reach orgasm, then his partner’s sexual pleasure is also likely to be diminished.
Sex Addiction Is Sex Addiction,
No Matter Where You Play
It is important to note that the basics of sexual addiction are the same with or without the involvement of technology. Put simply, cybersex addicts engage in their problematic sexual behaviors repeatedly and compulsively, despite clearly related negative life consequences. As a result, their relationships (should they have them) are threatened, school and work become a struggle, and they lose interest in recreation, hobbies, and other activities they used to enjoy. Cybersex addicts also tend to isolate, keep secrets, and lie to those close to them about their hypersexual behavior, typically experiencing debilitating shame about not just their behavior but their lies and secrecy. Sometimes they make promises to themselves and/or others that they will stop their troubling behaviors, only to find themselves right back at it just a short while later. In these respects, the challenges of sexual addiction are the same as ever. The fact that in today’s world digital technology so thoroughly facilitates sexually addictive fantasies and activities is merely a byproduct of the Internet era. In other words, with sexual addiction the primary thing that has changed in recent years is the manner and speed with which addicts can locate and access the sexual content and partners that fuel their addictions.
It is also important to state that although sexnology does without doubt facilitate and drive modern-day sexual addiction, it does not appear to be a root cause of sexual addiction. In fact, as mentioned in the opening paragraph of this section, most healthy people are able to use porn, hookup apps and the like in non-compulsive and life-affirming ways. They do not become addicted, and they do not experience negative consequences. However, individuals who are predisposed to addiction, impulsivity, compulsivity, depression, anxiety, and the like may well struggle with sexnology, just as they might struggle with alcohol, drugs, gambling, or any other potentially addictive substance or activity. As such, the growing availability of digitized sexual content and partners does not increase the likelihood that these individuals will struggle in life; it merely increases the likelihood that their struggles will be sexual in nature.