It’s hard to ignore a bowl full of condoms at the entrance to a gym, which is a common sight in America.

Some University of Mississippi students stop after practice and consider getting a condom, but change their minds when they hear their fellow students laughing behind them. Almost no one takes a condom after all.

Even though officials claim they refill the bowl multiple times and even though condoms are available in many places on campus. Ole Miss students say the indifference is indicative of changing attitudes.

Fewer young people are having sex, but teenagers and young adults who are sexually active are certainly not using condoms regularly, if at all. People aged 15 to 24 made up 50% of the cases with chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2022, according to The Associated Press.

The latest data from 2022 shows that Mississippi has the highest rate of teenage births in the country.

Where is the contempt for the condom – It has come to an end

The declining trend in condom use is due to a number of factors: medical advances such as long-term birth control options and drugs that prevent sexually transmitted infections, the now waning fear of HIV infection, and different ways of sex education in high schools.

It’s this end of condoms; Not exactly. But some public health experts are thinking about how to help younger generations practice safe sex, know their options — including condoms — and get tested for STDs regularly.

“The old condom ads were meant to scare you, and we’ve all been scared for a long timesaid Dr. Joseph Cherabie, medical director of the HIV Prevention Education Center at St. Louis. “Now we’re trying to move away from that and focus more on what works for you».

Changing attitudes

Women have long had her burden pregnancy or STD prevention, Cherabie said, and buying condoms or emergency contraceptives — often found in locked cupboards or drawers — can be an awkward experience and “shows signs of shame.”

It is likely that many of them students do not use condomssaid Megan Perry, president of the college’s Public Health Student Association.

Young women often have to start using condoms with men, she said, adding that she has heard of men telling their partners they don’t need to use a condom and will buy the morning-after pill to avoid pregnancy.

Annie Loomis, 25, a student at the University of Washington, said the dating apps and casual sex make it difficult for people to know what a “healthy sexual relationship” looks like when it comes to intimacy and respect.

“If you say, ‘Hey, I want you to wear a condom,’ and they say, ‘No, I don’t,’ you’re not having sex.” It should be that simple,” Loomis said. “But it isn’t.”

If the risk of pregnancy was the driving factor for condom use among heterosexual couples, the fear of HIV infection was the driving factor for condom use among gay men.

But as that fear has subsided, so has condom use, according to a recent study that focused on a cross-section of the population HIV-positive gay men.

The Grindra popular gay dating app, even lists condom use under the words “kinks” instead of “health.” Such things lead Steven Goodreau, an HIV expert at the University of Washington who led the study, to worry that the change in attitudes toward condoms is trickling down to younger generations.

Goodreau believes the promotion of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a drug that prevents HIV, overshadows condoms as a prevention strategy. A strategic plan for federal HIV research through 2025 does not mention condoms, nor does the national plan to end the HIV epidemic.

Pleasure — for both men and women — has long been an undisputed factor in the lack of condom use, according to Dr. Cynthia Graham, a member of the Kinsey Institute team that studies condoms.

But more, advances in medicine have expanded options for both STDs and pregnancy prevention.

Young women turn to contraceptive implants such as intrauterine devices and birth control pills to prevent pregnancy. And researchers say that once women are in committed relationships or have had a sexual partner for a significant amount of time, they often switch to long-term methods of preventing pregnancy.

OR condom use is now ‘almost a thing of the pastn” for men who have sex with men compared to the 1980s and early 1990s during the AIDS epidemic, said Andres Acosta Ardilla, director of community outreach at a nonprofit primary care clinic with based in Orlando. which focuses on Latinos with HIV.