Women Who Use Porn Sites Prone to Cybersex Addiction

There is a general bias toward thinking of things like cybersex or Internet porn addictions as inherently male problems. We may allow this sort of stereotyping to cloud our everyday thinking, but the same basic problem also exists for research into the area. Although women struggle with these problems just like men do, there has been little scientific investigation into cybersex addiction and Internet porn use among women. A new peer-reviewed study has investigated the phenomenon, specifically looking at the chances of women developing a cybersex addiction.

Women and Cybersex Addiction

You’d be hard pressed to find an addiction that affects only men. There may be some inherent differences between the genders, but addictions of all kinds are equal opportunity conditions. Most research into cybersex addiction has focused on men because of our inherent assumptions about men being more at risk, but the existing evidence on women and cybersex shows that females suffer from problems in the same way men do. The current evidence suggests that women prefer interactive forms of online sexual activity, such as chat rooms (in comparison to men, who watch more pornography), and that their interest increases around middle age. However, even simple facts like how common cybersex addiction is among women remain unclear to researchers.

The Study: Investigating Cybersex, Porn Use Among Women

The researchers recruited 51 women who used Internet pornography and 51 who didn’t (all under age 30), and used questionnaires to determine how serious each individual’s case of cybersex addiction was (if present). The researchers also determined how prone each was to sexual excitement and looked into general mental health and other problematic sexual behavior. This was supplemented with an experiment involving participants ranking 100 sexually explicit images according to how arousing they found them. Researchers also assessed their cravings in response to the images. The main aim was to look at the difference between Internet porn users and non-users, but researchers also tried to identify factors that increased the likelihood of cybersex addiction.

The researchers defined cybersex addiction as a dependence on sexually motivated online behaviors, such as viewing pornography (hard or soft-core), taking part in sex chats (or webcam use for sexual purposes), reading erotic literature online or using sex shops.

Equal Opportunity Addiction

The researchers found that female Internet porn users rated the pictures used in the experiment as more arousing and had greater increases in cravings after viewing them than the non-porn users. The researchers found that among the women who watched online pornography, the severity of their psychological symptoms and problematic sexual behavior, alongside their ratings of arousal and craving in response to the images and their sensitivity to sexual excitation, made it more likely they’d have tendencies suggestive of cybersex addiction. Although the researchers also looked for a link between relationship status, number of sexual contacts, satisfaction with sexual contacts and interactive cybersex use, none of these factors was found to be related to the risk of cybersex addiction. The researchers point out that these findings are in line with those found when similar studies were conducted on men.

The Gratification Hypothesis and Female Cybersex Addiction

The researchers argue that their findings are consistent with the “gratification hypothesis,” which states that those who obtain more sexual arousal from cybersex are more likely to develop an addiction to it. This sounds like an obvious statement, but it seems equally obvious that real world dissatisfaction with sexual experiences or the frequency of those experiences would have a role to play, too. The researchers found, however, that there was no such link. Results using similar experiments in men also found that regular Internet porn users were more susceptible to the effects of explicit images, but not less likely to be satisfied with real world sex.

Understanding the Internet and Sexual Addictions

The finding might add only a somewhat expected detail to the picture (that women become cybersex addicts for the same reason men do), but it’s another step forward in the broader issue of the Internet, sexual behaviors and addiction. The availability of pornography and sexually explicit websites makes cybersex addiction (and more generally sex or Internet addiction) a particular problem in the modern world. As more research is conducted, it may become possible to target treatment to those in need and offer pre-emptive support for those at risk. Another, no less important, lesson from this study is that despite our inherent assumptions, women have issues with cybersex addiction in the same way that men do, and we need to find out more about it for the good of both genders.