'' Sex on the Net is just so seductive and it's so easy to stumble upon it,'' she said.
'' People who are vulnerable can get hooked before they know it.'' To those who say a behavioral compulsion is not a true addiction, Dr.
As with other addictions, tolerance to cybersex stimulation can develop, prompting the addict to take more and more risks to recapture the initial high, Dr. Online viewing that began as a harmless recreation can become an all-consuming activity and even lead to real sexual encounters with people met online.
Cybersex compulsives can become so involved with their online activities that they ignore their partners and children and risk their jobs. Cooper's survey, 20 percent of the men and 12 percent of the women reported they had used computers at work for some sexual pursuits.
Assiut is very conservative,” said the single Egyptian male, who is studying medicine at the faculty in his hometown south of the capital. “There you can only say good morning to a girl in the street.” The World Wide Web has indeed opened doors for the doctor-to-be, providing him with the opportunity to chat with single women online.
Waleed still goes online regularly in the hope that one day he will eventually meet his future wife.
While social and safety concerns and fear of discovery may prevent someone from visiting an adult bookstore or prostitute, there are no such constraints when pornography and sexual partners can be called up at any time of the day or night on a computer screen in one's home or office, Dr. To those who say '' What's the harm?
They're not risking disease or death,'' Dr.
The survey found that as many as a third of Internet users visited some type of sexual site.
Projected to the country as a whole, this would mean that a minimum of 200,000 men and women have become cybersex addicts in the last few years, Dr. And, he added, because the respondents were self-selected and because denial of the symptoms of sexual compulsivity is commonplace, there are likely to be many more cybersex addicts than the survey indicated.'' This is a hidden public health hazard exploding, in part, because very few are recognizing it as such or taking it seriously,'' Dr. Young of the Center for Online Addiction in Bradford, Pa., wrote that ''partially as a result of the general population and health care professionals not being attuned to the risks, seemingly harmless cyberromps can result in serious difficulties way beyond what was expected or intended.'' According to Dr.
Many cybersex abusers are re-enacting aspects of past losses, conflicts or traumas in order to foster illusions of power and love.'' Some cybersex addicts develop a conditioned response to the computer and become sexually aroused even before turning it on, Dr. This can exacerbate the problem for people whose jobs involve work on a computer.