Dating apps and increased sexual risk behaviors while traveling: Challenges and opportunities for public health

Geosocial networking applications (apps) on smartphones have become an increasingly common platform to meet sexual partners among both heterosexual and homosexual populations. These apps include Tinder, Grindr, Badoo, Once, OkCupid, Happn, Match.com and many others, each with some variation in specific focus and target audience. Users can easily and freely find sexual partners who are geographically nearby anytime and anywhere as long as they carry their mobile phones. Recently, concern has been raised due to the suspicion that the use of dating apps is associated with high sexual risk behaviors and the acquisition of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially in travelers, in whom the new trend of using dating apps to find sexual encounters in travel has become popular in the last decade.
Source: Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Source Type: research