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Officials in the town of Middlesbrough, England recently issued a warning about the importance of the no-glove-no-love policy after syphilis cases started rising in the area.http://zeldalily.com/wp-admin/edit.php?paged=174
OK, cool, good idea.
But wait: Why is the Telegraph’s headline about the increase ”Facebook ‘linked to rise in syphilis’”? Broadsheet’s Tracy Clark-Flory had just the same query. Apparently, the areas that have seen the most cases are the ones where Facebook is most popular. Middlesbrough’s executive director of public health, Peter Kelly, issued this ironclad theory statement:
“Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex.”
“This throw-away line,” Clark-Flory writes, ”came after much cautioning against unsafe sex and encouragement for people to get treatment for the disease, but somehow what stuck was ’social networking sites’ and ‘casual sex.’”
Kelly also said:
“I don’t get the names of people affected, just figures, and I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites.”
Yeah, a vague “several” out of 30. Them’s the hard facts. And what if all the others had met their partners at picnics? What would the ridiculous conclusion be? People meet sex partners at picnics, ergo: Picnics lead to rise in syphilis.
Like people didn’t meet up for casual sex pre-Facebook … it’s called going to a bar. Before officials pin causation on social networking, perhaps they should consider that maybe folks are just being morons about protecting themselves. How confident are officials about sex education in the affected areas? Oh wait, no one bothered to ask.
Discuss.
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This is such a huge stretch it’s actually quite comical. Clearly it was a slow news day in England.
Well, I’ve been anti-social networking sites for years–and I’m syphilis free! MUST be a connection there!
Damn it my secret is out. This is the real reaons I like picnics.
[...] it fair to make Facebook usage such an issue for all teachers just because a couple of bad apples have given the rest of us [...]