Sex is everywhere on the web and you're most likely familiar with such content, whether you are a purveyor or you've stumbled across an article or television show that claims the new technology corrupts society by exposing us to unheard-of sexual practices involving harnesses and balloons. These exposés are then usually followed by detailed descriptions and photos of the harnesses and balloons.

It is true that one in 10 websites features pornographic material, and also that you need only to barely scratch the surface of the upstanding face of the web to find communities gathered around all kinds of debased kinks. But when it comes to reflecting on the impact of online sex on our offline lives, there needs to be less sniggering and fewer accusations about social corruption. The politics of sex are being transformed by the web.

"British culture has been fascinated by talking about sex for a very long time," says Professor Feona Attwood, academic and editor of Porn.com, a collection of research from specialists in this field. But pre-web, we had a much more puritanical view of what the possibilities were. "Older media are dominated by a view of sex as scandalous and dangerous, and its whole depiction of sex has been pretty predictable," she tells me.

Our exposure to a seemingly bottomless pit of debasement doesn't mean we're becoming more adventurous, however. Dr Petra Boynton, a sex educator and online relationship agony aunt, says that people still come to her with exactly the same questions and concerns that they always have – men about their anatomies and women about their relationships – it's just that the language they use now is more explicit. And there's no evidence that people who meet online are more likely to hook up quicker than people who meet offline. "Places like Facebook haven't caused an outbreak of infidelities," she says. "It simply enables people to meet up and form relationships."

Does this make the web the ultimate sex toy? Sure, on the surface, there's plenty online you can get off on, but sex isn't just the physical manifestation of stimulation; there's an important mental element involved as well. And the web is all about helping people establish emotional connections. Throw in some erotic imagery, augmented teledildonics technologies, or a bit of sexting or Skyping, and you have the makings of a rather extraordinary, albeit mediated, relationship. Boynton believes that is far more intimate than what you can get from the pages of a magazine and reflects more closely the entirety of the sexual experience. This is potentially transformative.

"If you are using old-media porn, it's something someone makes for you and you pick what appeals to you," she says. "The web permits you to write your own stories, describe your situation, inhabit another character, expand on existing stories, detail your sexual life through blogging or create your own." Interestingly, the sexual content that people generate is pretty traditional, despite the library of kinks that can potentially inspire us.

This interactive relationship with explicit content offers the possibility of ushering in a new age of sexual enlightenment: by having the opportunity to get involved with and generate sexual material, people are learning to express themselves as sexual beings and to develop a deeper understanding of what does and doesn't excite them. But in a culture that ridicules, vilifies and commercialises sex, this is laden with politics.

Here's a classic example: a recent Panorama documentary that examined the sexualisation of British children ignored the effects of the web on girls' blossoming sexuality, suggesting instead that online content was only changing boys' attitudes and behaviours; girls, proposed presenter Sophie Raworth, were being sexualised at a younger age because of fashion and pop music. Yet girls and women often express their sexuality on blogs or websites and they are exposed to the same kinds of online material as the boys. Why the disparity?

"There's an idea about how women express sex and sexuality," says journalist Zoe Margolis, the sex blogger outed as The Girl With a One-Track Mind, "and there's a real double-standard about how women are able to portray themselves online."

Attwood believes this will change. "The most striking thing, for me, is the way porn has become accessible to women; earlier forms of porn distribution, which relied on visits to sex shops or being passed among men, made it really difficult to get hold of," she says. "The web has made it possible for women to access porn easily, which is important for the way it will develop."

Generally, the focus of discussions about sex online tends to be on possible dangers, rather than on enlightenment or mental intimacy. The experience most people have is of searching for information about psychosexual problems, not looking for a good time. Yes, the kinks are out there – they always have been – but there is no evidence that simple exposure to the vast database of online fetishes has sexualised our society any more or less than previous media have. If anything, it's reversing the trend towards commercialisation. Online interaction, frank discussion and play are transforming our sexualities. The result will, with luck, be sexual enlightenment rather than social destruction.