What is it?

Phone sex is like cybersex except it happens over the phone. People say dirty things to each other, usually masturbating at the same time.

Why do it?

Unlike cybersex, people very rarely do phone sex with partners they just met. Instead, often people get to know each other over a period of several months before exchanging phone numbers.

Phone sex also enjoys some popularity among "real life" couples who can't see other for an extended length of time (for example, one is spending the summer in another state).

What are the risks?

Phone sex is much more dangerous than cybersex. The reason is that some people you give your number out to practice phone stalking. Phone stalking means someone constantly calls you to harass you for sex and say perverted things.

Unfortunately, once you have given your phone number to someone, you cannot prevent them from calling again without changing your phone number, which isn't easy at all. Although cell phones usually have the feature to block calls from a specific number, a clever stalker will find other phones to call you from.

For people who have phone sex with many partners, it usually doesn't take long to run into a phone stalker. For this reason, I strongly recommend not engaging in phone sex while you live with your parents.

Instead, if you really want to have voice sex, buy a microphone and attach it to your computer. Microphones can be found for pretty cheap ($10-20). Then you can use most of the big IM networks (AOL, Yahoo, MSN) to have voice chat, but you only have to give out your screenname. As long as you use a special screen name for your sexual activities (instead of your normal screenname you give to most of your friends), if you run into any problems, you can just make a new screenname, and it will be much easier to get away from uncomfortable situations.