A recent report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention found a recent spike in STIs such as chlamydia (up nearly 6 % since 2014), gonorrhea (up nearly 13%) and syphilis (up 19%) amount young people. The CDC says that almost 20 million new STIs occur every year, over half of them afflicting young people between the ages of 15 and 24.

The reason millennials are catching STIs is that they are not using condoms!

Young people are not practicing safe sex. In a casual relationship, when a person feels like they know the other person, they are less likely to practice protected sex.

Gay men say that with the availability of PrEP (a pill that helps prevent HIV infection), plus the fact that young gay men didn’t live through the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s, has made them more nonchalant about STIs and less likely to use condoms. They think that PrEP protects you from HIV and STIs are curable.

Also women sometimes believe that because they’ve gotten the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, that they are at less risk.

Heterosexual couples use protection because of the fear of unintended pregnancy which often outweights the fear of STIs. But if the women is on birth control and doesn’t use protection, she is at risk for both HIV and STIs because men aren’t always honest about their sexual historybut women aren’t either!

 

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