Nearly $500,000 was used by the federal government to study gay hookup apps and determine whether they increased the likelihood of risky sexual behavior.
The National Institutes of Health spent the money to study smartphone apps that gay men use for hookups by awarding Columbia University with a $423,000 grant to interview gay men who use GPS dating apps such as Grindr, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
"Smartphone technologies have provided a new venue for sexual partnering among men who have sex with men (MSM)," the grant for the project states. "Indeed, there are a rapidly growing number of smartphone applications designed to facilitate sexual partnering among MSM."
"Grindr, which first launched in 2009, has exploded into the largest and most popular all-male location-based social network out there," according to its website. "With more than 5 million guys in 192 countries around the world-and approximately 10,000 more new users downloading the app every day-you'll always find a new date, buddy, or friend on Grindr."
Basically the study, which interviewed 60 males who had used mobile apps to meet sexual partners in the past three months, is examining "how and why smartphone applications are used for sexual partnering," how gay men "present themselves," communicate, and what they look for on apps like Grindr.
With the technical help of the Global Positioning System, dating apps have been able to help their users "accelerate" the rate with which they find sexual partners, in comparison to online searching on the traditional internet, CBS News reported.
"Furthermore, given the expediency with which men are able to arrange sexual encounters using these applications, there is cause to question if, when, and how sexual negotiation and serostatus disclosure occurs," the grant said. "The overall study goal is to understand how sexual risk behaviors among MSM may be facilitated by the nature of GPS-enabled smartphone applications, the way they are used, and the process by which sexual partnering occurs via smartphone applications."
