Diagnoses of gonorrhea increased by 67 percent in past 5 years.

Sexually transmitted diseases are spreading rapidly in America according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2017, 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were diagnosed. That amounts to roughly a 10 percent increase since 2016!

Experts say many factors have contributed to the rapid rise, though the biggest one may be less frequent condom use. It’s less clear whether dating apps, like Tinder, have contributed in some way to the spread of STDs, though some researchers think they have.

While fighting over the moral order of the next generation, conservatives preached the mantra of abstinence while liberals the promise of widely available birth control and abortions.

The conservatives understood that the surest way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases was to abstain from sex until one was ready and in a committed relationship.

Liberals took a more defeated approach and believed that teens were going to have sex one way or another. The more extreme among them thought teens should be encouraged to experiment and explore–as if they needed any push towards making additional bad decisions.

While conservatives might have an unrealistic view, their Nancy Reagan “just say no” attitude was far less destructive. While liberals were right in assuming that hormonal teens would engage in sexual activities it turns out they were quite wrong in thinking that sexual education would stick.

Surely they were shocked to find that teens don’t pay that much attention in class whether its calculus or health. Right? Everyone knows that teens are far more interested in what a celebrity is doing in a music video. And they’re great emulators desperate for attention.

No, this problem isn’t just one that the gay community is dealing with anymore

The majority of syphilis infections have been seen in gay men but this recent spike has been hitting heterosexual couples hard. In that past 5 years, gonorrhea diagnoses have increased by 67 percent and infected women have increased by 18 percent. Women that are pregnant with the infection pass it on to their children.

This news comes at a time when the needle use in the heroin epidemic is at an all time high. The compounding effect of a culture that doesn’t seem interested in its own hygiene wont just laden our healthcare system with patients that need long term treatment.

If left unchecked these issues could cripple the economy, increase the crime rate, and leave thousands of children without parents or thousands of potential parents heading to the abortion clinic.

But as our social media lifestyle continues to drag our most impressionable future adults into a rabbit hole of attention-seeking and hedonism not much can be done to stop the cycle.