Students don’t need another reason to feel bad for lurking on Facebook, but UK officials just added one more to the growing list.
According to the Brits, the social networking site led to a rise in syphilis cases — in areas across the pond, at least.
The staff of the public health center in Teesside found that more time Facebook users spent sifting through profile pages and writing on other people’s walls translated into more casual sex partners.
That jump, in turn, led to a four-fold increase in reported cases of syphilis. And then there’s the unreported ones.
Although studies have shown people are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior with partners found on the Internet, officials are glossing over the most important point.
More people are deciding against wearing condoms.
Isn’t that choice the larger problem for the British?
With this report, health-service workers are looking to target a Web site instead of the ignorant choices of the public.
Experts seem ready to blame nearly any social ill on the realm of social networking.
However, Facebook is only an enabler for people making bad choices in the first place. What users choose to do off the computer is still their decision.
That is assuming, of course, that everyone logs out in order to hook up.
And nowadays, even that’s not a certainty.
