United Press International - Tuesday, 25 July 2000
Mike Santangelo, UPI Science News

A survey of 856 clients of the Denver Public Health HIV Counsel and Testing Site found those surfing the net to find mister or miss right were more likely to get an infection along with their romance than people trolling the singles bars and other traditional dating spots.

Lead researcher Mary McFarlane told UPI that 29.3 percent of the online romance-seekers had a history of sexually transmitted disease (STD) against 20 percent of the off-line romance seekers.

More than 69 percent of those studied were males, and 65 percent were heterosexual, 23.5 percent reported having seven or more sexual partners in the last year. Only 40.3 percent reported any use of a condom and 13.2 percent reported being under the influence of drugs or alcohol during their last sexual encounter.

A startling 16.8 percent said they had been exposed to a person known to have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. All had come to the clinic for HIV tests.

Researchers found 15.8 percent of the group had logged on to the net looking for sex and 65.2 percent of them said they were successful. About a third of that group reported they had found three or more sex partners in cyberspace during the prior six months.

"It's the efficiency of the Internet," says McFarlane, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease.

"You don't have to get dressed or leave home. You can make arrangements in advance to meet people during business trips [in other cities where you won't be recognized]," McFarlane says.

She says another advantage is that Internet search engines are very specific. "You can say exactly what you're interested in. Exactly what acts. You can be very, very specific."

Added to that, says McFarlane, is the anonymity. You're not a real person, you can be anybody you want on the internet, she says. The same holds true of a person's sex partner; they're often nameless or using an alias. Added to all of this is the thrill of danger and getting away with something illicit.

Other experts go even further in calling the net a trap for people seeking sex.

"It's very, very dangerous. I look at it as the crack cocaine of sex addiction," Dr. Alyson Nerenberg, Clinical Director of the Keystone Center Extended Care Unit and Center for Sexual Compulsivity and Trauma, in Chester, Pa., told UPI.

"People who would not become sex addicts become hooked on the net," says Nerenberg.

The clinical psychologist says that people who would not have the courage to walk into an adult book store, or rent a sex videotape run wild with computers.

She says she has treated people who spend 10 to 15 hours with their computers daily seeking sex partners.

She says these people are often loners who have drifted away from all other human contact. "They have to have more and more, always increasing the risk and the 'dose' of their sexual encounters."

Dr. Kathleen Toomey, Director of the Georgia Division of Public Health, agrees that Internet sex is a high-risk way to find romance.

But, Toomey, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the journal article, told UPI the net can also be used to educate people about the risks they're taking with what she calls "cybersex addiction."

"We did not anticipate the way it [the Internet] would be used," says Toomey. "There's a whole generation of kids growing up who are more savvy on the net than we are."

Because of that she believes sex educators can set up sites on the Internet and guide people who have run into trouble, while showing them how to avoid future ills.

Toomey says it's just not possible to close down Internet sex chat rooms the way gay bathhouses were shuttered in the mid-eighties during the first AIDS scare.

McFarlane already has a site, sexquiz.org, with a questionnaire that seeks to dissect motives and the choosing process for sex net surfers. The next step, she says, is to set up a chat room with sex experts who could listen to symptoms and give advice on diseases and treatment. She also wants to have the capability of allowing a person to enter a zip code and get a list of clinics in his or her area where free STD tests and treatment can be had.
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