YNOT – In what they believe to be a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at Australia’s University of Sydney are investigating how supposed “internet porn addiction” affects people’s work, finances and relationships.According to Dr. Gomathi Sitharthan, the researcher behind the study and Deputy Coordinator of the University of Sydney’s Graduate Program in Sexual Health, some 70 percent of men and 30 percent of women access internet porn. The situation is not nearly as dire as some conservative pundits would have one believe, however.

“Viewing porn online becomes a major problem only when people become so preoccupied that they spend 16 to 18 hours a day doing nothing else but watching porn, with serious impacts on relationships, work, studies and finance,” Sitharthan said.

“In recent years we have seen increasing numbers of clients coming to counseling practices with online porn addictions,” he added. “They come from all walks of life: students, teachers, lawyers, health practitioners and priests. Often they will come to counseling with another problem, and the underlying problem of addiction to internet porn may come out after two or three sessions. The sensitive nature of this issue means many people find it very hard to talk about.”

Some see internet porn addiction as a growing problem, partly due to digital porn’s easy accessibility in the comfort of people’s homes, Sitharthan said. Treatment options are limited, but the study hopes to uncover new routes to treatment by uncovering the depth of the difficulty and its underlying causes.

Sitharthan said he also hopes to create broader public discussion of the issue, particularly given the recent spotlight on the topics of sex addiction (in the case of Tiger Woods, for example) and the ready availability of explicit images online (in the case of the Macquarie banker caught viewing revealing pictures of Miranda Kerr).

The university invites the public to take part in an online survey here. The survey should take about 30 minutes to complete, Sitharthan said.