Stranger danger: Dating apps linked to rise in STDs?

NEED TO KNOW

• Recent STD rates have jumped as much as 700% for some Utah residents, and researchers question the influence of casual sex via dating apps
• The largest increase in STDs is for Utah females, but only 7% of women surveyed admitted to having had anonymous sex

Unless you’re a billboard in West Hollywood, you probably don’t talk a lot about STDs.

Hopefully you’ll admit a positive status to someone you’re in a relationship with… but what about the person you match with on, like, Tinder? 

According to a KUTV report, officials at the Utah State Health Department are extremely concerned about the shocking growth in STDs they’ve seen over the last few years -- and they’re thinking dating app-coordinated sexual encounters are to blame.

In just the three-year span from 2011-2014, for example, gonorrhea rates among Utah men went up 300%.  That’s nothing next to the state’s ladies, whose gonorrhea rates jumped 714%. 

The Health Department is eager to establish the root of the problem, but they need to rely on self-reported information such as surveys completed by STD-positive residents in order to do so.

What they’ve found so far doesn’t exactly answer Utah’s gender-oriented gonorrhea issue.  Forty percent of surveyed males admitted to having anonymous sex— which works in favor of the theory that the villain here is casual encounters with virtual strangers from dating apps.  But only 7% of surveyed women have owned up to the same — so either they're lying about their laying, or something besides anonymous sex is responsible for the 714% jump in gonorrhea rates.

Either way, it’s a problem that needs to be solved -- especially, KUTV’s Heidi Hatch argues, in states such as Utah that teach abstinence only.

Lynn Beltran, an epidemiologist at the Salt Lake County STD clinic with the job of calling the sexual partners of those who test STD-positive, offered Hatch one immediate solution: knowledge.

“People are not educated and think things like, 'STDs are only in that population I don't associate with,’” she said. “That’s not true. Nobody is exempt from being exposed to an STD when you are sexually active.”

So whether you’re sleeping with your Tinder dates or not, get tested. Know you’re clean, and ask for the status of the people you sleep with.

Otherwise, you’ll be in for a whole other kind of fiery feeling than your dating app promises -- and you’ll affect everyone who’s swiped it.

Here is the article and find an STD testing center near you.