News Article:
Internet pornography can be addictive
By Barbara Kreuser
The County Journal
The Internet has been a wonderful tool for communication and for research,
but it has its abuses as well.
According to Timothy P. Faust, MSW, a licensed independent clinical
social worker at Harbor North Counseling in Washburn, sexual compulsivity/addiction
and its diagnosis and treatment are not new to mental health professionals.
But what has significantly changed about the profile of people suffering
from sexual compulsivity or addiction is the preponderance of 12-18
year-old children being diagnosed with these behaviors before healthy
brain development is completed.
What has caused the proliferation of sexually inappropriate behavior
amongst adolescents? Faust and other therapists see it clearly associated
with the advent of Internet pornography, which researchers agree colors
a child's view of love and sex.
"There are at least a million web sites that are easily accessible
in the privacy of your own home," Faust said. "Accessing pornographic
material is no longer restricted to sleazy adult book stores and movies.
It's on-line, direct to any computer at home, in school, or even library
computers. Kids are drinking in these images and messages that only
teach lust, not love."
Because of the illicit nature of pornography, many parents remain
clueless about what their children are being exposed to. And in many
cases, it's not just the child seeking out pornographic sites on a regular
basis, but often times, children are unwittingly being exposed to hardcore
pornography through various methods and techniques such as mousetrapping.
Mousetrapping is a technique that forces users to remain on a Web
site by not allowing them to leave.
Attempting to exit the site will automatically open a new browser
window. Some mousetraps will open new windows ads infinitum, and the
only way to escape may be to reboot the computer.
Other "traps" are mass mailings sent as instant messages
to computer users. Often these can feature links to explicit porn sites.
This is referred to as "spimming."
"Spamming" is another term applied to mass mailings of ads
sent blindly to thousands of e-mail addresses. As with "spim,"
pornographers frequently elude filters by misspelling (sexx, for instance).
Patty Aftab, a cyberspace privacy and safety lawyer and executive
director of WiredSafety.org says MSN, AOL and CyberPatrol offer the
most advanced parental controls available, with options for filtering,
monitoring and time-restricted access. Still, its hard to control all
surfing.
In a case study, Aftab and her colleagues set up accounts with AOL
and Yahoo! under an alias and established a profile of a 13-year-old
girl that lived in New York and described her favorite music.
They clicked on a box asking for the girl's age which they falsified
as age 18. That was all the information that was needed to start surfing
the Internet.
On Web browsers and in chat rooms, Aftab reported the phony name and
address was barraged with sexuality in every form. In a "romance"
chat room, their alias was propositioned; was deluged with racy junk
e-mails and instant messages, many with links to sites where anything
goes bestiality, orgies, sadism and masochism.
"Kids are going to see things they've never seen in their lives,"
Aftab said in an interview. "It's unbelievable stuff you wouldn't
be able to buy in most porn stores. We need to prepare kids for this."
Faust agrees with experts such as Aftab, that "knowledge is power"
when controlling and eliminating cyberporn from their children's lives.
And the time to start is before curiosity, then habit, then addiction
finally becomes a reality.
For some parents, this is going to be a particularly uncomfortable
task, assuming their children have gone astray and have become immoral.
It's quite the contrary, Faust said. Sexual addiction has a definitive
biochemical component which actually gets children "hooked"
on pornography.
The term "addiction" used to be exclusive to chemicals such
as alcohol, drugs, or nicotine. But according to Faust, recent research
on the brain and its processes, reveals that many behaviors can become
as chemically addictive as a substance. Extreme overuse of the Internet
is such an addiction.
"There are naturally occurring peptides, such as endorphins,
which govern the electrochemical interaction within the brain,"
Faust said.
"These peptides are parallel to molecular construction of opiates
like morphine, but are many times more powerful. This biochemical reaction
is reinforced with regular viewing of pornography.
During his seminars with other professionals, Faust identifies three
behavioral types and how the addictive process begins.
Craving for ecstasy include:
Arousal addiction: To include compulsive gambling, stimulant drugs,
sex, and high risk behavior.
Satiation addiction: To include compulsive overeating, alcohol, and
depressant drugs.
Fantasy addiction: To include marijuana and artistic/mystical preoccupation.
"Sexual love (lust) spans all three of these major nueropathways
(arousal/satiation/fantasy)," Faust said.
Pornography, thereby, can become addictive because of the "feel-good"
sensations, Faust said.
At this time, there is no official diagnosis of Interent Addiction
Disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, which defines mental
health disorders and establishes a criteria to be used by mental health
professionals. However, since the patterns so closely match those of
pathological gambling, many in the addiction field are expecting more
difinitive criteria in the near future.
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