June 26, 2000

Surveys find Internet porn popular
___COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (BP)--Two surveys of Internet pornography use show a growing addiction ensnaring millions of Americans and threatening the health of the church, public safety and national productivity.
___Both found that a fifth of American adults visit sexually oriented websites.
___The latest survey of more than 1,000 adults reveals 20 percent--as many as 40 million--click on sexually oriented websites. Conducted March 8-10 by the New York-based polling firm of Zogby International, the study was commissioned by Focus on the Family.
___Eighteen percent of respondents who are married said they visit such sites. Almost the same percentage who called themselves "born-again" Christians told Zogby they indulge in online pornography.
___However, since Christians represented just a fifth of the respondents, the statistical sample is too small to yield an accurate estimate of the number involved, said Steve Watters, an Internet research analyst at Focus on the Family.
___Still, he said, it is clear pornography represents a growing problem that the church needs to address.
___The Colorado Springs, Colo., ministry receives 100 calls, letters and e-mails a month about porn-related issues. One of every five calls to its pastoral care line deals with pornography or Internet problems, he said.
___"One of 10 people you see in your church will have visited a sexually oriented website," Watters said. "If churches recognize this, we hope it will be easier to bring up in Sunday School and accountability groups.
___"What we hear from counselors is people don't get help until they get caught. We hope the church will take a proactive stance and help ward off problems before they get serious. We suspect it is a growing problem."
___The Zogby poll parallels the findings of another study conducted by researchers from Stanford and Duquesne universities. It found a minimum of 20 percent of American adults on the Internet visit sexually explicit sites.
___Although the authors only classified 1 percent of users as "cyber sex compulsives," that represents at least 200,000 people, based on an estimated 20 million people visiting porn sites each month. They defined compulsive as spending at least 11 hours a week in such activity.
___Statistics came from nearly 9,300 respondents who completed a 59-item survey on the MSNBC website in March and April 1998. A full report was to be published later in Sexual Addiction and Compulsion: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention.
___Among other findings of the MSNBC survey::
___ 70 percent indicated they keep their online sex site visits a secret.
___ 70 percent of e-porn traffic occurs between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on workdays. Twenty percent of men and 12 percent of women said they use their work computer to access online sexual material.
___ The problem is largely male. Men represented 83 percent of the users visiting the top five sexually explicit websites. While men preferred visually oriented material, females favored sex-oriented talk in chat rooms by a nearly identical margin.

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