Gmog5m

Study

Gay Men on Grindr 58% More Likely to Contract STDs

Hayley Matthews

Written by: Hayley Matthews

Hayley Matthews

Hayley has over 10 years of experience overseeing content strategy, social media engagement, and article opportunities. She has also written hundreds of informational and entertaining blog posts. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Bustle, Cosmo, the Huffington Post, AskMen, and Entrepreneur. When she's not writing about dating news, relationship advice, or her fantasy love affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, she enjoys listening to The Beatles, watching Harry Potter reruns, and drinking IPAs.

See full bio »

Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

Discuss This! Discuss This!
Advertiser Disclosure

Apps like Grindr and Scruff cater to gay men looking for casual sex, but new research finds the men who utilize them are more at risk to STDs than men who meet their partners in nightclubs.

The study was conducted through the Los Angeles LGBT Center and involved more than 7,000 area gay or bi-curious men, as reported by CBS News.

App users were 23 percent more likely to be infected with gonorrhea and 35 percent more likely to be infected with chlamydia, according to researchers.

How they got their results

Each participant was tested for STDs and later quizzed on details like how they met up with casual sex partners and how often.

How they got their resultsMen most likely to use such apps included Caucasians and Asian-Americans, men younger than 40 who are well-educated and those who use recreational drugs like ecstasy and cocaine.

One-third of the men indicated only meeting such partners through a club or bar – in other words, in person. Meanwhile another 30 percent used a combination of the bar approach and some form of online dating.

Thirty-six percent, however, specifically identified using mobile apps like Grindr and Scruff. These services connect gay and bi-curious men with other nearby prospective partners, often based on cellphone proximity.

“App users were 23 percent more

likely to be infected with gonorrhea.”

What can be done?

As the study puts it

, “Technology is redefining sex on demand. Prevention programs must learn how to effectively exploit the same technology and keep pace with changing contemporary risk factors for [sexually transmitted infections] and HIV transmission.”

How a couple first meets may not play a direct role in determining the likelihood of exposure to an STD, but the authors warn services that allow for more anonymous encounters generate a riskier playground.

As the study points out, Grindr, now available in 192 countries worldwide, had more than six million users in 2013.

Advertiser Disclosure

DatingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). DatingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.

Our Editorial Review Policy

Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.