Did the Google Mobile Sex Advice Service Boost Infidelity?

An initiative has been set up between the Grameen Foundation and Google Inc, to help raise awareness of sexually transmitted diseases in Uganda. This has been done in the hope of improving sexual health and wellbeing by reducing risky sexual behaviour amongst men and women. The programme was conducted through text messaging, but, unfortunately, far from boosting wellness, it has served only to increase infidelity.

 

Those who were participating in the project were able to text questions on any kind of sexual health problem to an automated service. The service, set up by Google, Grameen and a local mobile phone provider, then used specialist search technology to identify specific key words in the texts and then send automated responses with template answers in them.

 

Further research showed that, during the course of the study, rates of infidelity amongst participants jumped dramatically from 12 percent to 27 percent. These results are both shocking and unexpected, and expose a fundamental flaw in the project, which was only ever designed to help rather than to cause further problems. The field of mobile health is a new one, which brings technology together with other organisations to help improve the health of people through their mobile phones.

 

The reason for the rise in infidelity may be down to the education of women in Uganda, who, when they became more aware of the risks posed by unprotected sex, insisted on going to be checked out, and asked their husbands to come along. Some Ugandan men were very resistant to this idea, which led to their wives withholding sex until they would agree to be tested. The men then ‘solved’ this problem by having sex with a woman other than their wife, leading to a rise in infidelity. One of the problems with this particular project was that the women were more committed to the idea of safe sex than the men.

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