Physician advises app makers to advocate safe sex.
By Raif Karerat
Dr. Peter Greenhouse, of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH), has warned dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr could trigger an “explosion” of HIV among their user bases
Speaking to BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat, he said: “You are able to turn over partners more quickly with a dating app and the quicker you change partners, the more likely you are to get infections.”
“If enough people change partners quickly, and they’ve got other untreated sexually transmitted infections, it might just start an explosion of HIV … Apps could do that,” he continued.
He advised that apps make more of an effort to advocate safe sex.
However, The Online Dating Association, who represent online dating sites and apps in the U.K., disagrees that apps are to blame for increases in domestic STI rates, which have seen syphilis rates rise by 33 percent in 2014 and gonorrhea increase by 19 percent.
Marie Cosnard, of Happn, one of the the U.K.’s most popular dating apps, says apps shouldn’t be labeled as culprits.
“Dating apps are following wider social trends and changing behaviors that have been unfolding for decades — there’s a liberalization of attitudes towards the number of partners, the status of relationships, towards marriage, divorce, etcetera. “So the rise of any STD is not really connected to dating apps themselves, she told the Daily Mail.
“The problem is much wider. People need to be more educated in terms of sexual health and to take their responsibilities, no matter how and where they’ve met their partner,” she continued.
In the United States, The Rhode Island Department of Health revealed from 2013 to 2014, cases of syphilis rose by 79 per cent, gonorrhea by 30 per cent and HIV by almost 33 per cent.
Whitney Engeran-Cordova, senior director of the Public Health Division for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, opined, “Mobile dating apps are rapidly altering the sexual landscape by making casual sex as easily available as ordering a pizza.”
1 Comment
General concept floating around for years without real emphasis or conceptual connection. Needs someone to popularize and make “official” acronyms to get the point across:
* AEVD – app enabled venereal disease
* TED – tech enhanced diseases
* TEGI – tech enabled genital infection
* SNESI – social network enabled sexual infection