Cybersexy

This past week a number of sites have been buzzing with a report that having sex on the internet is directly linked to depression. Melbourne researchers have apparently found that, “People who visit online sex sites have ‘alarmingly high’ rates of depression, anxiety and stress,” reports an Australian website. The article, which has been bizarrely reprinted with only slightly changed wordings at a number of sites, starts off on a bad foot and goes downhill from there. As an explanation for why subjects were male, it claims:

This is because the people searching for online sexual thrills are overwhelmingly male and the quest for a female who will engage in the practice is a bit like searching for the holy grail.

Real nice. The article goes on to state that of the thousands of men included in the survey

Most spend more than 12 hours on the sites each week mostly chatting, participating in cyber sex with webcams, downloading video and images, or sending erotic emails.

Okay, so right off the bat we’re talking about a very specific subset of people who engage with sexual material online — specifically those who do it from more than 12 hours a week. What did the study find?

More than 27 percent of them were moderate to severely depressed on the standard scales. Another 30 percent had high levels of anxiety and 35 per cent were moderately to severely stressed. Apparently the more they engaged in online sexual activity, the higher their level of depression and anxiety was.

A number of issues here: as Boinkology points out, what are we counting as “cybersex”? As Ars Technica points out, what are we calling cause and effect? And as I’d like to point out, where exactly did these subjects come from?

It seems clear to me that if you specifically select men who are online looking for some manner of sex for that many hours a week, it’s very possible you’ve left the realm of “normal” internet use. Now you’re talking about a connection between depression and internet porn addiction. I know that sounds a lot more obvious and a lot less controversial, news outlets, but cybersex enthusiasts such as myself would appreciate if you didn’t trample our good name. Fine, we don’t really have a good name, but that makes it all the more important not to slander what tiny credibility we have.