A new use for dating apps: Chasing STIs

Heather Meador and Anna Herber-Downey use dating apps on the job — and their boss knows it.

They are both public health nurses who work for Linn County Public Health in eastern Iowa. They have discovered that dating apps are the best way for users to find out if someone they’ve met on the internet has exposed them to sexually transmitted diseases.

A nationwide surge in STIs — with reported cases of gonorrhea and syphilis increasing 10% and 7%, respectively, from 2019 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — isn’t sparing Iowa. They discovered that traditional methods of contact tracing such as the telephone call no longer work.

Meador, Meador’s county health department’s clinical director supervisor, said that “when I started 12 years back, we called everybody.” “It’s becoming harder and harder just to call someone on the telephone.”

They said that even texting is ineffective. They also said that people don’t answer messages on Facebook. Dating apps are the best. 

Because many people are meeting sex partners online — via sites like Grindr or Snapchat, which are headquartered in West Hollywood and Santa Monica, California, respectively — contact tracers often don’t have much information to go on, just a screen name or a picture.

Meador and her coworkers got approval from their local bosses to create profiles on the app through which they could contact infected persons.

Contact tracers are trained to interview people with an STI and tell their partners about the possibility of exposure.

Linn County contact tracers use these apps throughout their day. Grindr is a particular app that uses geolocation to show users nearby matches. The tracers use the apps to find people in the same areas as the person with an STI. Sometimes users “tap” the contract tracers to see whether they’re interested — in dating, that is.

Public health officials will send out a message asking for a call when they spot the person they are looking for. It works: Herber-Downey estimates that 75% of initial contacts are made with this method.

Linn County made the decision to move online as STI rates rise across the country and funding for fighting them drops. People also adopt new technologies to make it easier to find people and have fun. “STIs are increasing way faster than the funding we have,” said Leo Parker, director of prevention programs for the National Coalition of STD Directors, all while public health departments — many underfunded — are grappling with new behaviors.

“Social media companies make billions, but we have thousands,” Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, University of Southern California professor of public health, said. Klausner was previously the director of STD prevention & control services in San Francisco. Because of this funding gap, few public health departments can send staff online. Klausner stated that only in large cities does the department have someone who can do that.

Institutional support can be lacking even when there are enough staff to tackle the task. Employees who log in to the apps are sometimes questioned by public health officials. Klausner was once called to testify on behalf of a Ventura County, California contact tracer who was fired because he used sex websites for work.

However, people are increasingly moving online to meet their partners and it makes sense for us to follow them. Parker explained that “We are now in a virtual age.” Individuals might not be out, or might be questioning their identity, making online venues comfortable, anonymous spaces for romance — which, in turn, means people are harder to reach face-to-face, at least at first.

Grindr and other online communities like it are also useful public health tools that go beyond contact tracing. These spaces can be useful in spreading the word about public health issues.

Parker and the Linn County officials said public service announcements on dating apps — advocating for condom use or sharing the business hours for sexual health clinics — do seem to lead people to services. “We do get people calling in to say that they were given free testing. Parker said, “I saw it in Grindr.”

Grindr, which claims to be the largest LGBTQ+ dating app, sends messages and information to its members. Jack Harrison-Quintana, its director for equality, stated that Grindr is pushing out messages and other information. This engagement was heightened by the 2015 Meningitis epidemic in Chicago among LGBTQ+ communities.

The app distributed messages throughout the city about vaccinations during that epidemic. Harrison-Quintana then took advantage of the design of the service: Using Grindr’s geolocating capabilities to target messages to specific areas, Grindr workers targeted messages. “We could really go block by block and say, ‘Is this where these cases are appearing?’” He said. They sent more messages to this area if that was the case.

The campaign encouraged the app to continue its efforts, sending out messages about public health issues such as covid-19 and monkeypox to its 11 million monthly users. Grindr users can also display their HIV status, indicate whether they’re up to date on vaccines, and indicate whether or not they have had meningitis.

Grindr isn’t going to do certain things. Grindr will not allow public health departments or institutions to open institutional accounts. The company won’t allow users to receive automated notifications about STI exposures.

The company stated that privacy concerns are the reason, despite public health advocates calling for better messaging features. Grindr believes that having a government presence on the app is too intrusive. Users can trace infections back to their source by using anonymous notifications. (When asked about public health officials who join the site on their own, company spokesperson Patrick Lenihan said: “Individuals are free to say something like ‘I’m a public health professional — ask me about my work!’ You can discuss sexual and public health issues however you like in your profile.

Grindr’s position — however disappointing to some in the public health world — reflects a longtime balancing act attempted by the private sector, which aims to square government concerns with users’ privacy interests.

Klausner mentioned a 1999 syphilis epidemic in San Francisco as the first time he realized that these two interests could clash. An AOL chatroom was responsible for the outbreak. Klausner’s research revealed that it appeared as though someone could “get a partner online faster than you can get a delivery of pizza.”

But persuading New York-based Time Warner, eventually AOL’s corporate parent, to cooperate was time-intensive and tricky — gaining entrée into the chatroom required help from the New York attorney general’s office.

Klausner stated that the online industry has evolved since then. Klausner helped one company develop a way to send digital postcards out to people who might be exposed. The postcards said, “Congratulations! You got syphilis.” He said that they were “edgy postcards”, but some options were more “snarky”.

He said that overall, the dating apps world is still “bifurcated”. Apps that cater to LGBTQ+ clients are more beneficial than apps that primarily target heterosexual clients.

Jen Hecht explained that the reason is because of the history of sexual health in the community. Jen Hecht is a leader at Building Healthy Online Communities which partners with dating apps. “Folks in the queer community have — what — 30, 40 years of thinking about HIV?” She said.

She said that STIs can affect anyone, but “the expectation and norm is not there” for straight-oriented dating apps. Indeed, neither Match Group nor Bumble — the corporations with the biggest apps focused on heterosexual dating, both based in Texas — responded to multiple requests for comment from KHN. 

However, users seem to like the app-based interventions. Harrison-Quintana explained that Grindr is now using a simple, fact-based approach to communicating health information. He hasn’t received any backlash and that has been very pleasant.

KHN The Kaiser Health News is a national newsroom that focuses on health issues. KHN, together with Policy Analysis and Polling is one of three major operating programs. KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF, an endowed nonprofit organization, provides information about health issues for the nation.