I'm not a moralist. I don't care in the least what anyone does or with whom they do it. However, equating cyber-sex and simple masturbation ignores an important point.

I used to feel there was no difference between cyber-sex and masturbating to pornography, but I'm no longer of that opinion. The images and videos proffered by the porn industry are fantasy. Though the people are real, the viewer doesn't interact with them as real people. His relationship to them is strictly imaginary and 100% impersonal.

But when two people watch each other live on the Internet it's no longer impersonal. It's a form of shared intimacy, even if the two people don't know each other in real life and live thousands of miles apart.

Masturbation is a solo experience, but when two people do it together, whether in the same bed or simply connected via the Internet, it's not just masturbation. The mechanics may be the same, but there's more to it. It's sex between two people.