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Article Excerpt
Recent years have brought an increase in depictions of sexual situations on television and in film and music videos in the United States (Gunter, 2001). Due to federal decency regulations, most of these sexual episodes are "hinted at" rather than overtly shown, consisting of relatively "soft core" interactions (Reisman, 1991) such as kissing, hugging, or fondling (Gunter, 2001). The Internet, not being subject to such regulations, has emerged as a vehicle for the circulation of much more hard core and fetishized images (McNair, 2002). These images are available for consumption in the privacy of one's home, rather than solely in "adult" bookstores or movie theaters, thereby decreasing the possibility of moral sanction toward viewing even such hard core and taboo imagery as child porn, bestiality, or violent sadomasochistic sex (Albright, 2005; McNair, 2002). Fueled by what Cooper (2000a) has termed the "Triple A Engine" of accessibility, affordability, and anonymity, curiosity about sexually explicit images and opportunities for sexual banter and "hookups" (meeting partners for casual sex) in the "pornosphere" online (McNair, 2002) has attracted a wide audience: In January 2000 alone, 17.5 million surfers visited porn sites from their homes (C|Net, 2001), and an estimated 50% of all Internet traffic now is related to sex sites (McNair, 2002), with some sites experiencing up to 50 million "hits" per month (McNair, 2002). In 2006, 13% of website visits in America were to sex-related sites, and an estimated 30% of trade done in Second Life (a 3D simulated world) was sex related (The Economist, 2007). A study of college undergraduates found that 44% had accessed sexually explicit materials online "sometime," while another 3% admitted doing so "frequently" (Goodson, McCormick, & Evans, 2001). It seems the more taboo overt sexuality becomes, the more the Internet may be feeding into sexual curiosity and desires: A 2001 study found that 80% of Arabic Internet traffic goes to sex sites online (Kettmann, 2001). These findings lend credence to Ross et al.'s assertion that the Internet's success is based on the link between "high demand for a huge variety of sexual needs (and) a huge supply" (Ross et al., 2007).
Gender differences have been found related to both the amount and type of sex-seeking behaviors in which men and women engage: Older research on pornography found that males tend to hold more permissive attitudes toward pornography and that they are the predominant consumers of porn, compared with women (Fisher & Byrne, 1978; Kinsey et al., 1953; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994;). Yet more recent studies seem to support the notion that gender disparities in accessing porn may be narrowing in the digital era: An online poll of 9,000 respondents found that 86% of males reported accessing porn online, but that 59% of the females also had (Cooper, 2000a), while a study of 10,000 Norwegians found that only 32% had watched porn on the Internet, with more men than women reporting having done so (Traeen, Sorheim Nilsoen, & Stigum, 2006). Other studies have supported gender differences in the types of sexual images and situations sought by men and women online, with men more likely to pursue sex-related activity individually through seeking sexually explicit material such as pornography, while women are more likely to engage in interactive activity such as "cyber" or erotic chatting (Cooper, 2000a; Ferree, 2003; Mills, 1998; Young, 1999;)
Researchers have suggested that there may be negative effects of seeking sex online: Cooper et al. have called viewing porn a "cybersex compulsion" when it takes place more than 11 hours a week (Cooper, Delmonico, & Burg, 2000). Some researchers have concluded that viewing porn 53 online takes an "inordinate amount of men's time, effort and energy," leading to "depression, anxiety, and problems with felt intimacy with their real-life partners" (Philaretou, Maoufouz, & Allen, 2005), and may contribute to divorce (Orzack, 2004). Yet this kind of pathological use and outcome may be the case for only a small percentage of the population: Cooper et al. (2000) found that only 8% of those accessing porn online seem to have a compulsive need for it.
While some are using the Net to view sexual images and film, others are using the Net to meet partners for sexual chat or to "hook up," or have sex offline (Albright & Conran, 2003; Daneback, Mansson, & Ross, 2007). People have cited various reasons for doing so, including less risk of disease and less fear of public disclosure (Mills, 1998), particularly for those with marginalized sexual interests (McKenna, Green, & Smith, 2001). Perhaps surprisingly, women may be "hooking up" at even higher rates than men: One study found that approximately 80% of women who met someone for sexual chat online migrated to real-life sex, compared with only 30% of the men (Schneider & Weiss, 2001). Research in this area typically has focused on the negative consequencs or "addictive" qualities of seeking sex online: Schneider (2000) found that all of those in his sample (N = 91) had experienced "serious adverse consequences" as a result of their partner's involvement in sex online, including 18% reporting that erotic chat online had turned into an offline sexual affair (Schneider, 2000). Yet the study also noted that 31% reported that the Internet sex-seeking behaviors of their partners were a continuation of prior compulsive sexual behaviors, and not spawned by the Internet, as the study focused on the behaviors of "sex addicts." Another study of 856 men found that 39% admitted having met four or more Internet partners for sex offline (McFarlane, Bull, & Rietmeijer, 2000), and there is some evidence that those who seek sexual partners online also may engage in other high-risk sexual behaviors, including having more sexual partners, more anal sex, and more sexual exposure to HIV+ partners (McFarlane et al., 2000; Toomey & Rothenberg, 2000). Many researchers express concern about those seeking sex online, with some viewing it as potentially dangerous, or even as an addiction (Griffiths, 2001): Mills (1998) found that some people spend large amounts of time in sexual chat online ("cybersex"), with the average person chatting 20 hours per week, with some spending as many as 70 or more hours a week.
While some view sex seeking online as negative, other researchers see it as fulfilling an essential need for couples: Philaterou et al. have said, "Even though it is intuitively appealing to assume cybersex use is automatically detrimental to relational happiness and stability, there are couples who consider virtual sexual stimulations as relational sexual stimulants" (Philaretou, Maoufouz, & Allen, 2005, P.). Sex therapists have long utilized pornography as a legitimate tool to "jump start" flagging sexual desire in couples, particularly those in long-term relationships. A qualitative study of couples engaged in sex-seeking online has found that couples may be using erotica online and other sexual activities online such as webcamming with other couples as a way to bring renewed passion to these relationships where boredom may be an issue (Albright & Carter, in press). A gap in the literature still exists, since many of the studies focused on sex-seeking online have used samples consisting of the minorities of sex addicts and homosexual men seeking sex online, and not on the experiences of the majority of heterosexual men and women.
Because a solid foundation of sex research on Internet sex-seeking has not yet been established, alarmist reports have insinuated that the impacts of seeking sex or sexual partners online include everything from it being an addiction "more lethal than crack" (Corley, 2003), to saying that the constant barrage of images of ever-willing, sexually insatiable, augmented, and airbrushed women will leave males no longer desirous of "real-life" women as potential sexual partners (Amsden, 2003; Wolf, 2003), something that has been termed the "Centerfold Syndrome" (Brooks, 1995). A longitudinal study following Internet users found that accessing erotica online was predictive of compulsive computer use after one year (Meerkerk, Regina, Van Den Eijndens,' Garretsen, 2006), although the study had nearly a 50% dropout rate, which may have skewed the results to include a predominance of the more compulsive Internet users. Certainly, given the breadth of pornography, erotic sex chat ("cyber"), webcams, pornography-related websites, chatrooms, and the array of ready and willing Internet sexual partners for easy, casual sexual encounters, more research is needed on the sex-seeking behaviors of adults online, in order to develop a more detailed and nuanced picture of viewing porn and seeking sex online.
Purpose
The aim of this study is to explore data generated by a survey of a large sample of Internet users not predefined...
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