The XXX Factor: Sex and relationships in a digital world

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2015 (3310 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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In the olden days, prior to the turn-of-the-century, tracking down sexually transmitted diseases was mostly old-fashioned gumshoe work.

After Patient X was identified, simply locate his or her partners since the time it was believed Patient X first contracted the disease: from syphilis to herpes to AIDS. The gamut. Then find out who those people had sex with, and so on.

Often, the authorities charged with identifying those infected — let’s call them sex detectives — had a phone number as a lead. Maybe an address. Almost always a name.

But in 2015? Good luck. Sure, the majority of cases involve traditional tracking methods. Still, in an age of omnipresent social media, often cloaked by anonymity, combined with a dizzying array of hook-up websites and apps, traditional methods of tracing transmitted diseases are fast becoming outdated.

“It’s much more difficult for us to track down people’s contacts because they might not even know their name,” said Winnipeg Regional Health Authority medical officer of health Joss Reimer. “They may just know their user name. It might just be ‘Winnipegguy25,’ and we have no idea who that is.”

Trying to track down sex partners through social media user names. Can you get any more 21st century?

Of course, the seismic shift to digital has infiltrated virtually every aspect of life, so it’s only natural sex and relationships would be affected.

Consider: No other generation in history has had access to unlimited pornography. According to a soon-to-be-released study, the No. 1 way adolescents ask out someone on a date now is online. The No. 1 way adolescents break up? Online.

There are apps where you can not only find a willing sex partner, but locate them using GPS. Forget about Tinder or Grindr, even stuffy old Facebook has become a hook-up haven for those wanting to share more than vacation photos.

“Social media and technology is here to stay, and it’s changing the way we relate to one another,” noted Wendy Craig, scientific coordinator for PREVNet, a national organization of researchers whose primary aim to prevent online bullying.

“We’re much more likely to communicate more frequently in youth online than any other medium. And we’re much more likely to share more information about our day online, compared to face-to-face conversations.”

The most critical question, therefore, is “What does this mean?” Well, it means a lot of changes. But technology is changing so fast it could be years, even decades, before the impact of social media on social behaviour manifest themselves, both good and bad.

 

Searching for sex in a faceless world

Joss Reimer and Pierre Plourde have spent the last year trying to trace and prevent the largest outbreak of syphilis in Manitoba in 30 or 40 years. It hasn’t been easy and technology, as is often the case, has been both a boon and a detriment to the efforts of WRHA medical officers.

First, some background. The recent syphilis outbreak has been largely confined to gay men. A dozen new cases were reported last March alone, the highest number since the mid-1980s, prior to the AIDS epidemic.

But the dramatic decline in HIV cases, combined with successful treatment, has resulted in a “small subset” of the gay community, according to Reimer and Plourde, of engaging in “very risky, unprotected casual sex.”

“It’s a choice they’ve made,” Plourde said.

Unlike the mid-’80s, however, many of these men are hooking up using apps such as Grindr and Squirt. The latter is described as a “gay cruising hook-up site,” the former contains a GPS application that locates everything from gay-friendly restaurants to potential sexual partners in the immediate vicinity.

It’s not like these social media invented casual, anonymous sex. It’s just that there’s an app for that now.

“It’s a lot easier to met in a faceless world,” Plourde said. “For the shy, introverted person… the Internet or apps are an attractive option. That’s the way people interact. It’s gone from addresses and land lines to cellphones to this virtual space.”

Added Reimer: “To be fair, it’s not just related to sex. Now that’s how everybody (interacts).”

At the same time, such social media and technology has been hailed as a safe, welcoming gateway for adolescents and adults alike of any sexual orientation into their own community.

“In a lot of ways it’s actually really wonderful, especially for men who are looking to have sex with other men,” Reimer noted. “They used to have to face the possibility of being assaulted or insulted or whatever when making sexual advances to someone else. Because it was always risky.

“Now you have a platform that allows you to connect with other people who are looking to hook up with you as well without the risk of misinterpreting advances. Men who are not gay do not tend to react well to sexual advances from another male. The convenience and safety aspects of this I find really intriguing.”

Further, social agencies, such as the WHRA, are now buying space on these same websites to post public safety announcements warning about the current syphilis outbreak to a targeted audience.

In all, about 50 per cent of WRHA cases of sexually transmitted diseases involve people who’ve met online.

But the use of “hook-up” apps applies to any sexual orientation or gender. Tinder allows young adults (the majority demographic) to virtually swipe from one potential mate to another. Meanwhile, Facebook, which in recent years has been abandoned by youth, has been taken over by their parents — with a growing number using the network as a dating site.

“It’s human nature,” Plourde explained. “It’s normal human behaviour to yearn for sexual gratification. Technology has made it much more convenient and user-friendly. It gives so much more opportunity now.”

According to a recent survey (1,200 people) in Shape and Men’s Fitness magazines, almost 80 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men believe using social media speeds up a relationship and leads to sex sooner. A total of 65 per cent reported to have been asked out on a date via text message and 49 per cent on Facebook.

After all, if history has taught us anything, it’s that if you develop a new form of communication between the masses — regardless of original application — someone will devise a way it can possibly lead to Mr. Right. Or Mrs. Right Now.

Meanwhile, Reimer and Plourde know full well that as much as the nature of their job has radically changed in the last decade, they expect no less evolution in the future.

“I have no idea what they’ll come up with next,” Reimer said. “They always seem to be a little ahead of us.”

 

When youth date and parents date themselves

There is no shortage of anecdotal and tragic evidence that social media, when used as a form of bullying and humiliation, can cause extraordinary, irreversible harm. Awareness and education programs to protect youth from their own dwindling privacy are now flourishing both in and outside the school system.

But what about “Jack and Diane”? You know, the average teenagers — circa John Mellencamp, 1980 — dealing simultaneously with raging hormones and ringing iPhones?

Not long ago, a Vanity Fair article that garnered viral attention crowed social media was destroying teen lives, creating a “hook-up culture” where, according to one New York girl, “Oral is, like, the new kissing.”

“Social media is fostering a very unthinking and unfeeling culture,” Donna Freitas said in Vanity Fair article. Freitas’s 2013 book The End of Sex examined hook-up culture on college campuses. “We’re raising our kids to be performers.”

This could be one assumption, given there was a time, a generation ago, when it was argued simply teaching sex education in the classroom would be considered a tacit green light for sexually curious adolescents. So what happens in an era of unlimited pornography accessible by the click of a button and 40 per cent of kids have their own iPhones by Grade 6?

Well, the little empirical on the impact of technology on sex/love/relationships among teens, in some cases, is positive: the average age of first sexual experiences remains unchanged, the number of teenage pregnancies have dropped dramatically in the last 30 years, while use of condoms has jumped.

But those numbers don’t begin to tip-toe through the emotional mine field that is now social media of the 21st century. Especially for young women.

“When you add the anonymity online, it’s a really dangerous mix. Because it just makes it too easy to go too far,” Sasha Emmons, the editor-in-chief of Today’s Parents magazine, told Global News.

Previous generations had their own problems in adolescence, but not 12-year-old posting selfies in front of a bathroom mirror in their underwear. And being devastated because the photo didn’t get enough “Likes.”

 

That’s the thing about evolving social media. It’s the same, but it’s different.

Teens don’t spend hours talking on land lines like they did in the 1970s. Today they text-message each other up to 100 times a day. Twenty-somethings don’t go to singles bar, like the Rorie Street Marble Club in Winnipeg in the 1980s, they can sit at home and swipe their way through Twitter in their underwear, while streaming House of Cards on Netflix.

How’s this for irony? While at the same time using walls of technology, the conversations themselves are on average more intimate.

“Especially in adolescence,” said Craig, the PREVNet coordinator. “Because it’s safer, right? You can distance yourself from the response.”

More intimate. More anonymous. More, period.

“The challenge for us as a society,” she added, “is that we have to educate children about how to have these online conversations if that’s the way that they’re doing it. But we, as adults, who are raising children right now, didn’t (have or use social media) so we don’t have the experience.

“So it’s made relations much more incredibly complex and harder for adults to be the kind of supporters they need to be. Because, one, we’re not present to give the feedback and, two, we’re not viewed by the youth as having credible information about the technology.”

Craig acknowledges the common threads through technologies, old and new; and how they can all be used as a communications life-line for successive generations. But…

“It’s the same thing, only this is a more pervasive element of our society in the sense that isn’t not just limited to having a conversation (on the phone),” she said.

“We’re going online for multiple functions. We’re meeting people on game sites. We’re meeting people in dating sites. And what we can access is different. It’s way beyond what a phone can do.

“I don’t think it’s good or bad, it’s just different,” she added. “And we have to adjust to that difference. Relationships are just going to unfold in a different way and adults need to get on board. We get stuck in discussions about whether this is good or bad and we just need to move on.”

 

Generation XXX

Gabriel Deem found his first porno magazine at age 8. Cable porn at age 10. High-speed Internet porn at age 12.

He became addicted, exploring the unending universe that is Internet pornography searching for “a bigger hit.”

Deem not only doesn’t believe he’s not alone but, at age 27, has founded his own website (rebootnation.org) to provide a forum for young men now suffering sexual dysfunction due to porn consumption.

Last November, the Texas-based Deem was a featured speaker at a forum called Generation XXX — The Pornification of Children, held at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Deem contends that not just social media — but the vast world on online gaming — has the ability to subvert real life.

“If you’re asking me what it says about our culture, it’s instant gratification,” Deem said. “Everything on the Internet hijacks our drive.”

For example, Deem said an individual can be obsessed with “leveling up” on Minecraft at the expense of their real job. Porn hijacks the natural drive to pursue partners. Social media hijacks the drive to socialize face-to-face.

Don’t like the Tinder photo? Just swipe. There’s always another one.

“It’s creating a bunch of pleasure seeking, selfish people who are on to the next one,” Deem reasoned. “It’s manifesting itself into sexual dysfunction. Because you people have access to something that no human has ever had access to; an unlimited about of porn that constantly shocks them.

“You have to educate young people about how their brain works, and what they do and what they experience matters. It can change their brain, numb their brain. That’s wiring their arousal to a screen, not a real person. Teach them that they long for intimacy and connection and the more they get connected online, the more disconnected they are in the real world.”

Cordelia Anderson, the founder of Sensibilities Inc., compares yesterday’s porn to today’s mainstream media.

“It’s completely different,” said Anderson, an author and public speaker who has focused on the impact of pornography on youth. “You’re getting multiple stimulation now, compared to a flat page. The content now is more and more violent and degrading.

“That is so out of pornography that this is a hook-up culture,” she added, referring to the apps and sites used for casual sex.

“And there’s pressure to act like you’re cool and you’re hip and you don’t need to bother with that relationship stuff. It is so counter to what I believe boys and girls crave, which is a connection. A human connection.”

However, just as the technology evolves, researchers and educators have little definitive data on the long-term impact on human relationships.

For example, while kids have unlimited access to porn, they also have unlimited access to, well, everything — including how not to get pregnant.

“In a very non-public way youth are able to access information about sexuality and health that they were not able to do 25 years ago,” said Alex McKay, the executive director of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN).

Clearly, McKay said, not every other teenage girl is pregnant. The opposite effect has happened, in fact, indicating that social media/Internet has had positive impacts in terms of awareness and education on contraception, sexual orientation issues and social diseases.

As for the long-term impact of unlimited access to pornography? “We don’t really have any answers from researchers because this is a relatively new phenomenon,” McKay said, but noted that such access has been available for well over two decades now “and civilization hasn’t completely collapsed.”

Any major negative influence on relationships would be “self-evident” by now, he added.

Craig agreed, citing that while a cottage industry can suddenly appear to deal with “pornography addiction”, real life (as always) is much less titillating.

“It’s fear,” she said. “In reality, it’s only a small portion of kids who are going to be attracted to even look for that type of information. And those kids are always going to be at risk whether they’re online or off-line.

"For me, it’s fundamentally about providing the skills that children need. And it’s the same type of skills that we would provide them with off-line, right? You need to have good judgment. You need to be critical of the information you read. You need to make sure you’re safe.

“Just like when you’re walking to school: Don’t talk to strangers,” she concluded. “It’s just extending what we know and being the parents that we are.”

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca