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..and some even invent false personas!

Online Sex Drives The 'Net

By Reuters
Contributed by Rachelle Austin
On-line lovers were invited to click-and-tell Wednesday in the first poll to probe ''cybersex'', one of the dirty secrets behind the explosive growth of the Internet.

The poll, written by California sex researcher Al Cooper and posted on the MSNBC Web site, asked people about their ``on-line sexual behavior'': what they look at, who they talk to, and what they get out of it.

Cooper, clinical director of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Center and an adviser on sex therapy at Stanford University, said the survey was designed to find out more about how people are using the Internet to fulfill their sexual needs and answer their sexual questions.

``If you want a recipe on how to bake a cake you can ask your mother, you can go to your next door neighbor. But if you want some tricks on oral sex, there's really not a lot of good places to get access to information easily,'' Cooper said.

Cooper and other researchers say sex is already the most searched-for topic on the Internet and the quest for it is driving the net's technological advances.

``It is a big phenomenon, but the professional community has been a little slow in taking it seriously,'' said Cooper, who is also an adviser on sex therapy at Stanford University.

``The Internet is revolutionizing the way we think about sexuality ... it is dramatically changing the way we interact,'' Cooper said. ``It is the biggest thing to hit the way people meet since bars were invented.''

People were invited to answer the survey's 47 questions anonymously, logging on to MSNBC's Web site (www.msnbc.com).

Along with identifying their age, career, and sexual orientation, the survey asks respondents to be frank about how much time they spend on on-line sex, what kind of thrills they go for most, and how they describe themselves to ``partners'' in a medium notorious for role-playing.

Other questions that could be asked in future include whether voyeurism in cyberspace constitutes infidelity to whether meeting someone electronically before visually might lead to better long-term relationships.

Charlene Laino, MSNBC's health editor, said she decided to post the cybersex survey because it addressed two subjects sure to pique readers' curiosity.

``Come on. Sex and the Internet are two things that everybody is interested in,'' Laino said.

She quickly added, however, that the poll was designed simply to begin exploration of the developing world of cybersex and not to arrive at firm conclusions about on-line sex.

``The poll is groundbreaking because it is comprehensive and it brings up some interesting issues,'' Laino said. ``But it is not a statistically valid survey like you would find in peer-reviewed journals.''

Other experts also cast doubts on the survey's usefulness as a research tool, noting that prior polls have revealed that large numbers of people lie online or even invent completely false Internet personas.

``He needs a disclaimer that says 'For fun only,''' Vanderbilt University Professor Donna Hoffman told the San Jose Mercury News.

Cooper defended his approach, saying it was the only way available to begin collecting data on when, how and why people visit sex sites, ranging from pornographic picture galleries to Internet ``chat rooms''.

``It is clearly not perfect, but it is clearly a step above anything we've had before,'' Cooper said.

Cooper said that he hopes to get at least 1,000 ``usable'' answers through the cybersex poll, and will post the results through MSNBC once they have been analyzed.

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