By Brian Alexander
MSNBC contributor
updated 5:40 a.m. PT, Thurs., March. 27, 2008
Brian Alexander
E-mail
We here at Sexploration have been struck by a small spate of recent news items and research reports that, if taken together, could indicate that we are spending big money to kill off our sex lives.
I am referring to our pricey technology, the kind of thing you are using right now to read these words. (If you are going to panic over this, kindly do so after finishing the column, please.)
This month, Solutions Research Group, an organization that provides data to high-tech companies and also conducts surveys of our technology habits, published a report called Age of Disconnect Anxiety.
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It found that 25 million Americans now use a so-called smartphone like a BlackBerry or Treo, and that 63 percent of you smartphoniacs have used the thing while you are in the bathroom.
But as disturbing as the previous image may be, heres the one that ought to make you worry: Thirty-seven percent of laptop owners say they frequently use the computer in the bedroom. In all, 68 percent of Americans say they feel a sense of anxiety when they are not jacked into the global mind grid of the Net. This anxiety was defined as feelings of disorientation and nervousness experienced when a person is deprived of Internet or wireless access for a period of time.
Its tough to look forward to, or enjoy, sex if you are anxious, but heres something to make cell phone addicts even more anxious. In the January issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility, a group of researchers from the Cleveland Clinic reported that use of cell phones decrease the semen quality in men. Men using a fertility clinic were divided into four groups, ranging from no cell phone use to using the things more than four hours per day. The longer the men used the cell phones, the less he-man their semen. Sperm count, motility (how well our boys swim), viability (how alive they are) and normal morphology (how handsome they are) were all compromised.
A year ago, a team at the Medical College of Wisconsin exposed rats to six hours of cell phone emissions for 18 weeks and found that the rats own emissions went haywire. Specifically, their sperm exhibited a significantly higher incidence of sperm cell death than control group rats. Alarmingly, abnormal clumping of sperm cells was present in rats exposed to cellular phone emissions and was not present in control group rats.
Abnormal clumping? The authors offered sage advice: These results suggest that carrying cell phones near reproductive organs could negatively affect male fertility. While it may be good advice to avoid carrying your cell phone in the pouch of your jock strap, it is also good advice not to use the thing for six hours a day, especially if youre a rat.
The whole issue of electromagnetic fields and their effects on health is controversial, to say the least. Web sites can be found blaming them for everything from leukemia to autism, yet there is very little scientific evidence for most of the claims of harm. Still, abnormal clumping?
There are signs, though, that even if cell phone use were proven to cause some harm, we wouldnt give them up. We like our technology too much. Some of us like our technology more than sex.
You've got mail in bed
Also this month, a British study sponsored by the Sleep Council, the United Kingdoms bed industry group, declared Brits Swap Sex Drives for Hard Drives. Eight of 10 people, it said, boot up a variety of high-tech gadgets before bedtime. Almost one-quarter of respondents said they left their cell phones or smartphones on using them as alarm clocks. One in three sends or receives text messages or e-mails while in bed. Not surprisingly, the Sleep Councils spokeswoman, Jessica Alexander (no relation that I know of) managed to connect tech addiction and all that extra time in the sack e-mailing to the need to buy expensive beds that are regularly replaced.
So why not replace it with the Starry Night bed? Starting in 2009, Leggett and Platt, a manufacturing company based in Carthage, Mo., will sell you the Starry Night equipped with 1.5 terabytes of hard drive storage (in case you really want to listen to 400,000 songs or watch 2,000 hours of video), a headboard with a 1080p projector, Internet connectivity and an RF remote linked to a Microsoft Media Center for the low, low price of $20,000 to $50,000. If the thought having sex in a Space Shuttle cockpit turns you on, you ought to be good to go.
On the other hand, if you think the Starry Night could be an example of misplaced priorities, you wont get an argument from Marta Meana, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She studies sexual desire and also sees patients with low or no desire, including couples in sexless marriages.
There are reasons to believe there is a link to omnipresent technology, Meana says. If we are feeling like we are multi-tasking a lot, and our attention is divided many ways, that is getting in the way of making quiet time to have sex and really focus on another human being
Unfortunately, we do not privilege sensuous activity and sexuality the way we should in our marriages.
Plasma TVs more desirable than sex
Another survey was released recently by a UK electronics retailer that showed nearly half of British men would happily give up sex for six months in exchange for a free 50-inch plasma TV. Only about one-quarter of all respondents men and women said they would be willing to give up chocolate.
Let me repeat: About 25 percent said they would give up chocolate, meaning, presumably, that 75 percent would rather not miss out on a beloved Cadbury for six months than be given a 50-inch TV. But half of men said theyd willingly give up sex to get the TV.
