America's geriatric STD crisis laid bare: The states where seniors are having most unprotected sex

America's geriatric STD crisis laid bare: The states where seniors are having most unprotected sex READ MORE: America's STD explosion laid bare By Cassidy Morrison Senior Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com Published: 19:11 BST, 18 September 2024 | Updated: 19:13 BST, 18 September 2024 e-mail View comments A taboo health problem is quietly brewing among America's elderly population. They are having casual, unprotected sex at record levels, leading to historic rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Chlamydia diagnoses in people over 65 years old have more than tripled since 2010, while gonorrhea cases multiplied about six-fold and syphilis cases surged nearly ten-fold. As DailyMail.com's maps show, the problem does not appear to be driven by geography - rural Alaska and California, the country's most populous state, score among the highest for common STDs .

And it doesn't appear to be political either - deep red South Dakota and ultra blue Washington, DC both also have high rates of the diseases. Your browser does not support iframes. Public health experts posit that STDs are increasing among older Americans due to a lack of knowledge about them and their symptoms and, behaviors that put them at risk.

Many older Americans also grew up without comprehensive sex education in schools, which focused primarily on promoting abstinence until marriage. But over the past decade, a new sexual revolution in aging has occurred, upending norms and morality of casual sex. Once women h.