DUISBURG-ESSEN, Germany – Heterosexual women and men are equally subject to “pornography addiction,” thanks to the volume of adult content online, scientists at Duisburg-Essen University have concluded.

Professor Matthias Brand and his team studied 102 women age 30 or younger. Half of the subjects regularly viewed porn online; the other half did not. The researchers showed all subjects 100 explicit images and then measured each woman’s arousal level and self-reported desire for sex. The study did not incorporate variables like relationship status, number of sexual partners or typical satisfaction with sexual encounters.

Nevertheless, “results indicated internet porn users rated pornographic pictures as more arousing and reported greater craving [for sex] due to pornographic picture presentation compared with non-users,” Brand reported in the scientific journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. “Moreover craving, sexual-arousal rating of pictures, sensitivity to sexual excitation, problematic sexual behavior and severity of psychological symptoms [the women presented] predicted tendencies toward cybersex addiction in internet porn users.

“These results are in line with those reported for heterosexual males in previous studies,” he added.

Previous German studies have indicated exposure to online porn can make some women “hypersexual” — a presumed disorder characterized by behaviors once considered symptomatic of nymphomania — yet only 17 percent would describe themselves as “addicted to porn.”

According to the researchers, online pornography very well might be “the new cocaine.”