| 706 Room 520-B | Sexuality and Media Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Time: 8:30 AM-10:30 AM |
Cybersex and close relationships in portuguese chatrooms.
Carvalheira, Ana Alexandra*,1, Lopez, Félix 1, Prieto, Gerardo1, Allen Gomes, Francisco*,2, 1 Faculty of Psychology, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain2 Coimbra University Hospital, Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
ABSTRACT- Introduction: The Internet is altering patterns of social communication, interpersonal relationships and sexual interaction. Internet has been used for a diversity of interpersonal and sexual purposes. Sexual interactions do exist in the context of social life on the Internet. Objectives: Our major purpose was to examine sexual interactions in the context of interpersonal relationships through Internet. We present an online survey to study the prevalence of cybersex and the motives underlying cybersex in chatrooms and to identify the related sexual behaviors. Methodology: The study was conducted in 3 phases: (a) construction of the website using a PHP scripting, and database; (b) conducting a pilot testing, in order to check the functioning of the website and database, and questionnaire structure; (c) sampling and data collection. We used an active advertising method for recruiting participants: researchers entered the most popular Portuguese chatrooms and directly asked people to participated. Data collection was conducted over three month period, during which 3430 people visited the website. The participation rate was 39% (questionnaires totally completed). The final sample was 1266 chatrooms users. Results: Close relationships do often form on the Internet and the majority move on to real life settings. The best predictor of relationship formation was the time spent online. 75.4% of the subjects had formed a close relationship on the Internet, from which 29.7% were having an off-line relationship with someone met on the Internet. 41.3% of the total sample had engaged in cybersex in chatrooms, from which 56.2% had off-line sexual encounters with someone who met online; significant gender differences were found in the huge diversity of reasons for engaging in cybersex. 5.4% reported having more sexual satisfaction through an online sexual relationship than through a face-to-face one. Discussion We found a diversity of contexts and motives for engaging in cybersex in chats, as well as a huge variety of sexual behaviours. Determining factors in the pursuit of new ways of sexual interaction through the Internet are discussed. The role of anonymity and absence of physical interaction in sexual exploration, the possibility of meeting other people with similar sexual interests, and the immediacy of sexual gratification, contribute to the potential of the Internet to sexual exploration. Would be interesting for future research to study the group of subjects who exclusively prefer the sexual relationships through the Internet.
Key words: cybersex, online relationships, Internet, sexual behaviors, intimacy