New Delhi : Is sending ‘kisses’ on WhatsApp or posting intense love emojis on Facebook to your spouse replacing the real act between the sheets? It would seem so, according to leading experts on sex and behavioural sciences.
According to them, many young and working couples in India are now getting hooked on to smartphones and tablets, even in the bedroom, and this is having a paralysing effect on their sex lives.
Digital intimacy, it would seem, has diluted the physical connection between sexually active partners.
“There has been a sudden surge in young couples, especially working professionals, who come to me for consultations after facing weak sexual desire owing to social media addiction that gobbles up night hours,” says Dr Prakash Kothari, the nation’s leading sexologist based in Mumbai reported IANS.
Kothari told IANS that at present he is counselling 20 young couples “who blame late-night social media snacking for their low sex drive.” Kothari is the founder professor of the departments of sexual medicine at KEM Hospital and Seth GS Medical College, both in Mumbai.
“Carrying work home and continuous use of smartphone while you are with your partner hinder communication and relationship,” says Samir Parikh, director of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Hospital, New Delhi.
He says that for a healthy sexual relationship, a couple needs to spend more time together “where there is a feeling of undivided attention, sharing and togetherness”.Parikh too is dealing with several young couples who blame social media for their subdued sex life.
Among them is a 28-year-old executive who is on smartphone constantly for work-related stuff, not finding enough free time to spend with his girlfriend. A 38-year-old woman who came to see him was always on various social media platforms.
“It triggered constant conflicts in the couples’ life, affecting their relationship,” he said.
A recent study by Oxford University of 24,000 married European couples found that the more they read about other people’s exciting lives on social media, the more likely they were to view their own with disappointment, leading to a poorer sex life.
According to Kothari, the sexual process has four components: Desire, sexual grounding (how one perceives the stimuli), arousal (whether it leads to lubrication) and finally, orgasm.
“So foreplay, emotional touch, fondling and intense feelings count as much as a physical stimulant. With smartphones in the bedroom, the emotional togetherness that initiates sex is gone,” he emphasises. Sex between two married people is not a matter of getting the mechanics right. The emotional interaction is paramount.
Nishant Arora
