A new London-based startup is trying to teach young people about sex, and going to the most likely place they’ll look: the App Store.
Founder Fabrizio Dolfi described how a couple of years ago he was on a train reading an article about STDs on his mobile phone. The article that talked about the issue of young people not seeking medical attention when they think something may be going on down south.
“[Young people] avoid or delay seeing a doctor mainly due to embarrassment. Embarrassment that others might find out about their condition . . . Embarrassment, mostly among guys, to drop their pants in front of a stranger,” explained Dolfi. “Because of that many just wait, hoping that whatever it is will go away by itself.”
In an effort to avoid situations where young people avoid or ignore STDs or health problems to do with their sex life, Dolfi came up with the idea to bring sexual health information to young people through their mobile devices, with the My Sex Doctor (MYSD) app.
Because of that many just wait, hoping that whatever it is will go away by itself.” – Fabrizio Dolfi, MYSD App Creator
“I realised that a large part of the problem regarding young people and STDs have to do with insufficient education,” said Dolfi. “That’s when I came up with the idea of an app that would have given them easy access to minimum knowledge required to properly manage this new function of their body that activates by itself during puberty: sexuality.”
The recently released app, which is available in a lite and a $1.99 paid version, gives a comprehensive overview of sexuality and answers the most common questions that Dolfi and his team found that young people have. During their preliminary research, the team asked young people to write down the 10 questions or doubts about their sexuality that bothered them the most, and used this information to create the app. Dolfi also had a friend who was completing a PhD in sexology at the time to weigh in on content.
The finished result is a sexual database, complete with a list of sexual topics that include various types of sexual activities, pregnancy, a dictionary that defines sexual terms such as “back door” and “mons pubis”, and a list of the “100 Things You Must Know.”
“The ultimate purpose of the app is to change the way people access sex education,” said Dolfi. “To free them from the embarrassing conversations with parents or relatives, from hours spent online reading . . . to avoid getting the wrong ideas from misinformed friends or adult entertainment.”
He continued, “We think sexuality is a fact of life, it just happens. The same should be true for sex education. As young people mature they should have easy access to information about sexuality, and our app tries to provide precisely that.”
I recently downloaded the My Sex Doctor app and I must admit.. it’s really really cool!! Thanks for letting me know about it!!
By the way: You should consider writing a new article, I wasn’t around during the summer and found this story by chance…