Is Sexting for Shy People?

It's a wonder how shy people even got along before the Internet. Just imagine a world pre-electronics, when you actually had to leave your room to go meet people. Scary idea? Then you have some bashfulness.

"Shyness" is now known by the modern name "social anxiety disorder". In the past decade, more attention has been paid to social anxiety disorder and statistics have shown that between 5% and 15% of people suffer from it at one point or another. Furthermore, people with acute anxiety disorder may suffer "panic attacks" - a physical fear reaction that can paralyze you. Symptoms of panic attacks may include tunnel vision, accelerated heartbeat, dizziness, nausea, and an overwhelming sense of dread.

The blame for increased numbers of social anxiety sufferers is frequently laid on the Internet. The blame usually goes "people isolating themselves to focus on a computer or phone instead of dealing with each other in real life". In truth, there's much more to the story. We're surrounded by every form of media, all the time. In addition, most people in the Western world have to work themselves half to death compared to how things were just a half century ago. When you're going into six-digit student-loan debt just to qualify for a job where you're going to have to work 60 hours a week just to survive, it's a miracle if you get enough sleep, let alone have time to hob-nob at the yacht club.

Sexting, like other forms of online communication, can help people with their social phobia - up to a point. It is great therapy for people who cannot meet their emotional needs for connection with other people in any other way. Sexting is even better than phone sex, because in text media you can take your time, compose your thoughts, and best of all you don't have a stutter when you're typing.

Of course, one shouldn't let sexting become their only interaction with the outside world. It should be seen as the complimentary side dish to social interaction, not the main course itself. But, like any form of new media, it's been demonized unfairly by our loyal moral guardians. If you're the kind of person who limits all social interaction to electronic media while staying in your basement 24/7, you would have been the same person who locked themselves in their log cabin and spent every night staring into the fire one hundred years ago, before the Internet. Electronic media just lets you do something now that you couldn't do before.