Smartphones have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other through text, email, and video chatting. Digital technology has created a portal through which we exchange feelings of intimacy, while also allowing us to literally remain distant. Durex, in partnership with Siren Mobile, wants to take things to the next level: The condom company announced Tuesday it plans to launch a product that could actually help users achieve an orgasm, but at what cost?

In the U.S., more than half of Americans own a smartphone and are pretty attached at the hip to it. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive found Americans would rather skip sex than give up their phones, televisions, or Internet connections. Only 20 percent of those surveyed said they couldn’t live without sex, which trails 26 percent who’d just die without their phones.

Despite the “technoference” of smartphones in our intimate relationships, Durex claims its “game-changing” product, which the company did not provide details about, is a technological breakthrough that will actually help users achieve an orgasm.

“With our deep understanding of arousal and the impulses involved, it was only natural for us to look at how we could combine this with digital technology,” said Richard Arnold, head of research and development at Durex, in the press release. “We took inspiration from modern habits and our ever-growing reliance on portable technology for virtually everything in day-to-day life, and our market research has identified a genuine desire for this technology in our sex lives.”

Arnold and Lee working together to design product
Richard Arnold, head of research and development at Durex, and Susie Lee, CEO of dating app Siren, working together to design breakthrough product. Durex

The idea of technology enhancing the way we experience sex is innovative but also intrusive in the bedroom. Couples are already struggling to “power down” their smartphones to “turn on” each other. Too often they check their phones in bed before they go to sleep, after they wake up, and even in the middle of the night. It’s diminishing couples’ intimacy to the extent they begin to expect less from each other.

Women have even acknowledged smartphones are to blame for their reduced sex drive. A survey by Bayer, the pharmaceutical company, found more than a quarter of women admit email and Internet are disrupting their love lives, with hand-held devices particularly to blame. Two-thirds of the participants admitted their partners do not make enough effort in the bedroom to initiate sex. This is not surprising considering couples check their smartphones in bed at various hours of the night.

Phones occupy a couple’s time and energy in the bedroom, and therefore make it difficult to transition into having sex afterward. The use of laptops and smartphones in the bedroom with a partner is just a technoference that distracts them from each other. Initiating sex immediately after checking an email is non-organic, but it also makes it difficult to switch from one mindset to the next.

Lee holding phone
Susie Lee holding Durex's breakthrough sex product. Durex

Durex’s product aims to “amplify human connection in the bedroom and improve our sex lives,” according to Susie Lee, CEO of dating app Siren, but it could actually drive couples apart. This will just further increase the dependence on technology, especially if women can give themselves an orgasm on their phone. Intimate connection may soon begin to cease to exist along with real intimate relationships.

Pleasant but not fulfilling, we may all begin to resort to digital intimacy, as actual intimacy will become less common. Even if that means having sexless orgasms, for better or for worse.