London :Dating apps may be increasing rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), according to experts in the UK. “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,” said Dr Peter Greenhouse, one of the UK’s leading sexual health doctors.
“What really worries me is that we are just at a tipping point for HIV,” said Greenhouse. Greenhouse said apps are potentially dangerous to users’ sexual health.
“If enough people change partners quickly, and they’ve got other untreated sexually transmitted infections, it might just start an explosion of HIV in the heterosexual population. Apps could do that,” Greenhouse said.
Dean Street National Health Service (NHS) sexual healthcentre in London, which runs one of the UK’s only app support clinics, says it’s regularly supporting dozens of patients a month, BBC reported.
The latest figures from Public Health England suggest rapid rises in some STIs. Syphilis has seen a 33 per cent increase and gonorrhoea a 19 per cent increase in 2014.
However, Marie Cosnard, head of trends at Happn, one of the UK’s most popular dating apps, does not think that apps are the culprits.
“Dating apps are following wider social trends and changing behaviours that have been unfolding for decades,” she said. “The rise of any STI is not really connected to dating apps themselves. The problem is much wider,” said Cosnard.
PTI