JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As a young subgroup, college students have become the main participants of mobile social networks. Considering that people can indiscriminately access explicit sexual content on the internet, coupled with the increase of HIV infections in male college students, the role of the internet for meeting sexual partners and its correlation to risky sexual behavior has become an important topic.

Objective:

Under this background, we aim to explore the use of the internet for meeting sexual partners among male college students in order to provide evidence for the effective interventions to reduce the likelihood of risky sexual behaviors and prevent the spread of HIV among college young students.

Methods:

A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted among male students from 44 colleges located in Hangzhou. A total of 1045 sexually experienced male students were incorporated in our analysis with the following information: social-demographic characteristics, sex related behaviors and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) knowledge. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to examine the differences regarding basic characteristics and risk sexual behaviors between males who meet sexual partners via the internet and those who do not. Sequential logistic regression models were employed to examine influences of meeting sexual partners via the internet on sexual risk behavior after controlling for other factors.

Results:

Anonymous social software (e.g., Momo, Tantan, Blued and Aloha) were the most common sites (87.6%) for males to seek sexual partners online, followed by acquaintance social software(e.g., Wechat, QQ, Facebook), which accounted for 40.04% among male college students. The likelihood of risky sexual behavior was varied, yet it was highest for males who aim to meet paid sexual partners (75.52%-85.36%), followed finding partners for love or romance (59.31%). Compared to non-internet partner seekers, internet partner seekers tend to have more casual sex (53.87% vs 10.14%), paid sex (5.9% vs 2.39%), sex with same sex partner (64.39% vs 8.15%), use psychoactive drugs (35.82% vs 12.2%) and have more than 2 partners. With the increase of HIV/STD knowledge, the probability of having unprotected sex decreased for non-internet sex users. However, it increased for internet sex users with a rising HIV knowledge score. Sequential logistic regression showed that meeting sexual partner on internet was statistically associated with unprotected sex (OR=0.255, P<0.05).

Conclusions:

Meeting sexual partners via the internet is a common behavior among male colleague students, and those who meet partners online exhibited higher levels of risky sexual behaviors although they had sufficient HIV/STD knowledge, especially for students with the aim of finding partners for sex. Thus, more attention should be paid to young adults to address the risky sexual behaviors that may contribute to increase HIV spread among this population.