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More Porn Data Needed

May 9, 2001 / 9:39 AM EDT / AP

Do Internet porn sites warp adolescents?

There's no data to tell but the question needs study, said psychiatrists on an American Psychiatric Association panel titled "Voyeurism in the New Millennium: A Prime-Time Obsession?"

"The potential of seeing hundreds of thousands of such images during adolescence — I have no idea what that could do. But I can imagine it must be profound," said Dr. Norman E. Alessi, a University of Michigan psychiatry professor.

Dr. Stephen Brockway, an audience member and psychiatrist at an addiction treatment center in Wickenburg, Arizona, said he's seen how the easy availability of pornographic photos can hurt some adolescents.

"It becomes a substitute for real interpersonal skills," Brockway said. "That's scary."

In an interview after the symposium, Brockway said he has patients who spend 10 hours at a time on the Internet.

"They don't eat, don't sleep," he said. "We call the Internet the crack cocaine of sex addiction."

Brockway and Dr. Renee Lamm of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said they tell such patients to get rid of their Internet connections as the first step toward health.

Though there's been no research on online voyeurism, Dr. Robert A. Kowatch, a University of Cincinnati psychiatry professor, said there may well be a continuum with most people just looking, a smaller group at risk and another group of compulsive users whose viewing causes problems with jobs, family, or social lives.