The more personal information was shared, the more trust followed — and the more that tracked with sex without a condom

Dating apps changed how men who have sex with men in Thailand arrange to meet. This study asks how the personal information disclosed while chatting in an app relates to what happens sexually after they meet.

An anonymous online survey run from mid-February to mid-March 2015. 277 people responded and 222 passed the screening as app users seeking partners. The questionnaire was distributed through public web boards and closed Facebook groups, and relationships were examined with correlation analysis.

• How much the apps were used correlated with unprotected sex — number of days used (r = .249), number of locations used from (r = .320) and time spent per session (r = .360).
• Disclosing identifying information correlated with it as well — a Facebook account (r = .337), a mobile number (r = .306) and an address (r = .240).
• 88.3% withheld their real name, yet 80% shared a real photograph of themselves, and more than half (54.3%) disclosed more than two types of information.
• Of the 106 respondents who met someone in person, 77 (72.6%) had anal sex, and 27 of them did so without a condom.
• Condom use was concentrated on anal sex at 91.5%, falling to 13.2% for oral sex and 17.9% for manual sex.
• In the previous six months, 37.3% had never tested for HIV and 44.6% had never tested for other sexually transmitted infections.

The study's recommendation is to move HIV communication into the places the audience already is — inside the apps and on Facebook — rather than waiting for people to come looking. But the part that shapes the message is the mechanism, not the channel: trust built by exchanging information is what comes before protection drops away, so a message that works has to speak to the feeling of already knowing someone, not to someone who thinks they are meeting a stranger. The very low condom use in oral sex also points to an incomplete picture of transmission routes.