A Wired World of STDs

"You start off when you meet the person with a higher level of intimacy. You feel like you know them because you've had this correspondence, and physical intimacy proceeds a lot faster. Typically, the more we know someone, the less likely in general we are to think they have an STD ... 'Oh, they're like me, they're not going to have an STD'." Dr. Jill Grimes

We are, after all, trusting and vulnerable, for the most part. Hoping against hope that we will be able to solve the problem of loneliness. Hoping to find, through some miraculous source - and isn't the Internet a scientific marvel, a miracle of instant communication, a source of never-ending enterprise, surprise, enlightenment and hope? - a partner-for-life, someone we can share our lonely existence with.

Think about it: at a physical remove people can represent themselves in any kind of favourable light that occurs to them. That they feel the other person wants to know about. To encourage their chances of success. They can portray themselves as physically attractive, healthy, prosperous, with values to match those of the person at the other end. Eventually some of the truth will become revealed.

But the largest truth - character - may not, until much, much too late. It's true that there are some people who would never think of betraying other peoples' trust. In any way imaginable, including painting themselves as being other than what they really are. But it takes two, one at either end, to play that game, and even if one person is honest and above-board there are no guarantees the other will be.

Relay all the information you think is required to persuade someone that you may represent the person they've been looking for. Establish a relationship of mutual trust, of respect, and that each person admires the other for a myriad of reasons, and there's the base for a relationship. Make arrangements to meet, and face one another.

The relaxed attitude that each brings to the meeting, a result of a prolonged preliminary series of 'meetings' through an Internet connection brings with it an aura of familiarity leavened with trust. And the relationship speedily matures to physical intimacy to satisfy the longing and the hopes of a future promising an extended role including commitment.

And this appears to be why it is that there is an immense proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases, with Chlamydia rates skyrocketing, and the per-capita rate of new syphilis cases across Canada soaring tenfold since the year 2000. "People these days tend to go on the Internet to find partners there and don't seem to inform themselves very much, they just want to have sex, and they get infected," according to Dr. Denis Allard, New Brunswick's deputy chief medical officer of health.

In 2004, a research team at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reported 43% of women they had surveyed reported having sex with someone they met first online. Those women tended to present with a high rate of sexually transmitted infections. "The Internet is a flourishing sex venue" presenting as a wide pool of potential partners. The potential to spread "an STI or HIV with greater efficiency than ever before imagined", was their conclusion.

Trust and vigilance simply don't seem to go together. Hope and prudence don't either.

In California 43% of gay men and 7% of heterosexual men who in 2010 had contracted syphilis reported that they met their sexual partners online. "It can have the potential to change how transmission works. It makes it more efficient for people to find [sex partners]."

Safe sex and the Internet simply don't seem to mesh. The Internet online dating industry has soared in profitability from $40-million in 2000 to over $1.5-billion currently. A Leger Marketing survey last year revealed that a quarter of Canadians have become involved in Internet dating, while 16% had sex with someone they met online.

It certainly is a wired world.