Get STD Tested, Then Check in on Foursquare!

If you’re as obsessed with location-based services as most people seem to be, you probably love checking in at restaurants, coffee shops, bars…and STD clinics? Maybe not, but that’s what MTV is hoping you’ll do as it launches its “Get Yourself Tested” Foursquare campaign. The network is encouraging teens to get tested, then check in on Foursquare to tell everyone that’s what they’re doing. They’ll get a special “GYT” badge for doing it!

Tracy Clark-Flory remembers getting tested as a teenager, “and the prospect of announcing it to the entire world would have sent me running for the hills,” she writes on Salon. Even so, this campaign is a step in the right direction when it comes to removing “the stigma around STD testing.” Even the prize—those who score the badge can win a trip to New York City—is a good move: “It's much easier to explain a clinic visit as an attempt to win a silly contest than it is to tell your parents that you're having sex.”
(More STD stories.)