Cybersex: A chance for adultery

2005-08-24 10:56

Paris - Hundreds of millions of people the world over use the internet every day to shop, chat, work, read the news and plan their next seaside holiday.

But many also go online in search of a little extra-marital cybersex, making the internet a new vehicle for adultery, suggests a book recently published in France.

"The internet will soon become the most common form of infidelity," said Yannick Chatelain, co-author of In Bed with the Web: Internet and the New Adultery and an expert on new technologies.

"It is obvious to all that the computer has already unsettled relations within the family," he added.

Cheating online offers new possibilities, according to co-author and psychologist Loick Roche. "Infidelity has always existed but the internet makes it easier to remove inhibitions, and to graduate from virtual secrets to the real thing."

Bored couples more likely to have cybersex

"We are talking first and foremost about the 35 to 45 age group, people already settled and perhaps a little tired of married life. They want something else and they are not afraid of new technologies, which can be discouraging for those over 50," Roche explained.

For younger internet users, meeting people online - including sexual encounters - is already the status quo, he added.

Cyber adultery takes many unexpected forms that can, according to the authors, endanger a couple's relationship. The British statistical office, they note, has pointed to the internet as contributing to a rising rate of divorce.

Online sexual chitchat with strangers in discussion forums, specialised gadgets that enhance online "gender switching", web-cam sex - all of which can lead to face-to-face encounters - are a few common cybersex activities.

Internet service providers, said Chatelain, often try to have it both ways by condemning online pornography while doing little to block intensive spamming of end users with ads for porn sites, web-cam encounters and sexual performance enhancers.

Thriving online sex market

The online sex market "will account for $70bn in 2006," according to Chatelain, noting that there are about 400 000 porn sites in the world.

Cybersex practitioners are mainly men, accounting for 80% of "adult" website users. But the percentage of women visitors to such sites continues to climb, according to Netvalue, which measures internet traffic.

No country is immune from the virtual world of cybersex. In 2001, Spain topped the list ahead of Germany, Britain, Denmark and France, according to one study of pornographic website traffic in Europe.

A survey of 15 000 internet users conducted by MSNBC in 2004 revealed that 32% of women, and 13% of men, feared the Web encouraged adultery.

Another study confirmed their fears: 30% of internet users who have online lovers, according to a United States survey published on the BBC news website, admit to having met their virtual paramours in the flesh.

- AFP