Abstract
Young people's use and participation in online sexual activities (OSA) has increased in the past two decades and has changed their behavior in the area of sexuality. The existing literature has some important limitations, concerning the assessment of the construct and its orientation toward problematic use, while ignoring its healthy use or social participation and its relationship with well-being. The main objective of this study was to analyze the relationships between the three types of OSA (compulsive, isolated, and social) proposed by Delmonico and Miller, as well as offline sexual behavior, and psychosexual well-being. It was also necessary to evaluate the factor structure of the Internet Sexual Screening Test (ISST). Participants were 1,147 university students of both sexes, aged between 18 and 26 years, who completed a battery of online questionnaires. The main finding of the study is that, when controlling for other online sexual behavior, different types of OSA evaluated relate differently to offline sexual behavior and to psychosexual well-being, and that most young people made healthy use and participation of OSA. It also presents a new structure of the ISST. The discussion emphasizes the need to recognize the positive consequences of OSA to implement programs for the promotion of sexual health.
Highlights
Internet allows a wide range of behaviors that involve sexual content, topics, and stimuli. These behaviors have been labeled as online sexual activities (OSA; i.e., Shaughnessy et al, 2017)
We introduced the sociodemographic variables; in the second block, the OSA scores; and as dependent variables, those related to sexual behavior and psychosexual variables
Comprehension of OSA is important for researchers of sexuality, as it is a phenomenon that, in just two decades, has acquired great relevance worldwide
Summary
Internet allows a wide range of behaviors that involve sexual content, topics, and stimuli. These behaviors have been labeled as online sexual activities (OSA; i.e., Shaughnessy et al, 2017). OSA include a large variety of behaviors, both solitary (i.e., viewing pornography) and shared (i.e., sexting). A construct related to OSA is that of cybersex. Cybersex was defined by Cooper et al (2004) as the use of the Internet for sexual gratification, so cybersex and OSA could be considered as interchangeable to a large degree. Daneback et al (2005) stated that cybersex was a subcategory of OSA and defined it as the engagement of two or more people in sexual talk while online for the purposes of sexual pleasure. For conceptual clarity and given the polysemy of cybersex, in the rest of the manuscript, we will refer to OSA
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