Mary Aiken is a cyber-psychologist and author of the new book, The Cyber Effect, published by Spiegel & Grau in August 2016.

Anthony Weiner had everything to lose, and he lost it—first his career, and then his wife, Huma Abedin—all because of his apparent inability to stop sexting, a behavior I call cyber-exhibitionism.

What kind of compulsion drives someone like Weiner? Sexting, or exchanging intimate text and images online, is increasingly popular behavior, almost normalized, but it’s an awfully high-risk practice for a public figure like the former New York congressman, who was married to Hillary Clinton’s closest aide. In Weiner’s case, the behavior is so reckless it defies logic.


As a cyber-psychologist, I believe that Weiner’s behavior fits in with a growing trend: the powerful, sometimes overwhelming temptations that the online world offers up to exhibitionists. Cyberspace is an environment where you can have a much harder time controlling impulses, whether online shopping, gaming or oversharing with a total stranger.

Before the Internet, the so-called “flasher” was a guy with an open raincoat who had an urge to expose his genitals to others, typically strangers caught off guard, in order to gain sexual satisfaction. There are plenty of jokes about them, cartoons and comic sketches, but exhibitionism is a real disorder. Men make up the vast majority of people who participate in exhibitionism and nearly all targets of exhibitionism are women, underage girls or underage boys. Usually the behavior begins during the first decade of adulthood, although some individuals do start later in life. Roughly one-third of all men arrested for sexual offenses in the U.S. are exhibitionists.

Some psychologists believe this behavior is driven by profound feelings of personal inadequacy. Some men expose themselves looking for affirmation of their masculinity. Others may simply seek attention they crave. The exhibitionist might be afraid to reach out to other people out of fear of rejection and is led to exhibitionism as a way of involving others, however briefly, in an intimate moment. Logically, if contact is limited to just the opening of a raincoat before dashing off, the possibility and pain of overt rejection is minimized. Anger and hostility toward people, particularly women, may drive the behavior.

And exhibitionism is difficult to treat. Several methods are usually tried without success, which is why exhibitionists have the highest rate of rearrest of any sexual offender. Weiner wasn’t arrested, but he could not seem to stop himself from sexting again and again, even after his career was ruined and his marriage was in serious trouble.

How did technology affect Weiner’s political demise? As with many other psychological conditions and disorders, the Internet can amplify and escalate behavior. Due to an array of various cyber-effects, the online environment can make us more impulsive—and compulsive. In the so-called “real world,” a sexual offender can engage in exhibitionistic behavior only so many times a day, to so many victims a day. Online the possibilities, and the temptations, are truly limitless.

As with many other psychological conditions and disorders, the Internet can amplify and escalate behavior.

As far as we know, Weiner was not a street-corner exhibitionist. Rather, he befriended female strangers online and quickly transformed informal chitchat about politics and policy into sexually explicit exchanges, unprovoked and unwanted sexts.

Such cyber-exhibitionism is an apparent mutation of real-world behavior and part of a new generation of “paraphilia” (or bizarre sexual behavior and fetishes) in cyberspace, where there is greater reach, a wider audience, more victims, compromised judgment, more risk-taking, heightened distress and, most important, permanent digital records. For an individual with the sorts of apparent needs and vulnerabilities that Weiner demonstrates, the forces of online disinhibition, escalation and impulsivity are enormously powerful. And enormously destructive.

Everyone has, to some degree, narcissistic and exhibitionistic traits. These are aspects of the human condition. But for those who live their lives on a public stage—politicians, entertainers and other performers—these traits can be much more pronounced. The narcissist and exhibitionist are hungry for feedback or some reaction to their behavior. And the Internet offers endless possibilities for that. A recent study Ohio State University demonstrated that men who post a lot of selfies—particularly if they were edited or Photoshopped beforehand—score higher on measures of narcissism and psychopathy than men who don’t. Follow-up work suggests that the same findings apply to women. There is a self-reinforcing cycle: When a selfie is posted, it leads to feedback, which encourages the posting of more selfies. “We are all concerned with our self-presentation online,” said Dr. Jesse Fox, lead author of the Ohio State study, “but how we do that may reveal something about our personality.”

I am often asked why politicians and celebrities seem to indulge in online exhibitionism and other risky behavior with such apparent frequency. My answer is that public figures with careers that thrive by amplifying their presence online are probably more exposed and noticeable. The important thing to keep in mind is that their struggles mirror the struggles of many others. And we are only just beginning to see how technology can make that much harder.

Clearly Weiner’s behavior was persistent and distressful enough to destroy a political career that he had been diligently polishing and honing for decades, and a marriage to a woman who had publicly forgiven him for previous indiscretions and supported him. What would drive a man to such risky behavior and cause him to become an object of such incredible ridicule? The answer lies in that parallel world of cyberspace, a place where people will do things that they would never do in the real world.

The more we know about that parallel universe, the better off we are. While we are all shaking our heads at Weiner, bemused and fascinated by his behavior and downfall, the temptations and tragedies of cyberspace await the more vulnerable of us among the population of 3 billion people who are now online. Weiner’s sad example can give us a better understanding of how the online experience can sometimes bring out the worst in a person. The only solution is to dig deeper, do more cyber-behavioral studies, and to understand the profound and pervasive—subtle but insidious—impact of technology on us all.