Nowadays, it seems like there’s an app for everything. Ordering food, arranging dates, sorting out transport, monitoring your diet or fitness regime. The list goes on.
But one of the more controversial apps that you may have heard of over the last year — or seen popping up on your Facebook feed — is an app that claims to be an effective method of contraception.
Below, we ask the question — can you really trust your smartphone with birth control? Read on to find out everything you need to know about digital contraception and just how effective it actually is.
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The app in question
The app that’s got everyone talking is Natural Cycles.
Marketed as a contraceptive app (or ‘digital contraception’), Natural Cycles uses the app’s algorithm and an accompanying thermometer to log the user’s subtle temperature changes, and therefore recognizes when the user is ovulating.
Other apps have done something similar before, but normally the other way around — if women are trying to get pregnant and want to track their ovulation for their best chances.
Natural Cycles claims to be an effective and natural form of contraception — without the intrusiveness of IUDs or hormone-release of birth control pills.
The app costs roughly $65 a year and includes an oral basal thermometer.
So how exactly does digital contraception work?
The app works by using a more advanced version of the ‘rhythm method’ — that is, the way that women have been tracking their cycles and fertility levels for centuries.
It does this by tracking hormone levels through your body’s temperature. The two are linked: your body temperature can rise by 0.2–0.45°c due to higher levels of the hormone progesterone).
Once you’ve taken your temperature with the oral basal thermometer provided, you input the data into the app. The type of thermometer is important, as an oral basal thermometer is more sensitive than a standard thermometer and can detect the very slight temperature differences in your body — logging the reading to two decimal places.
The app then uses a set of ‘smart’ algorithms that determine your fertility status — i.e. the likelihood of you conceiving on a particular day. These are indicated as ‘red’ days (days where you are at risk of pregnancy) and ‘green’ days (‘safe’ days where no protection is apparently needed).
Is it an effective method of contraception?
The short answer is no.
One of the key issues with this form of contraception is that the app’s algorithm is based on temperature readings that need to be taken at exactly the same time every day. This is because the changes in temperature that are meant to reflect hormonal changes are so slight.
The issue with this is that anything can affect your temperature — factors like illness, a hangover, smoking, or even the smallest amount of exercise. So even if you meticulously take your temperature at the same time every morning to allow the app’s algorithm to track your ovulation, there can still be discrepancies.
This means the app can get it wrong and mistakenly suggest that days are safe, or incorrectly predict your ovulation cycling. The side effects? Unwanted pregnancy.
Natural Cycles claims to have a 93% effectiveness rate — meaning that 7 women out of 100 get pregnant during the first year of using the app as their means of contraception. The company terms this as ‘typical’ use — that is, taking into account human error. According to them, if the app were to be used perfectly, the effectiveness rate would be around 99%.
However, there are plenty of sceptics — including experts in this field — who remain unconvinced by the app’s effectiveness as birth control. The app relies on the user adhering strictly to temperature-taking at exactly the same time each morning, under the same conditions. Not to mention that this ‘clever new method’ of digital contraception essentially relies on calculated abstinence to prevent pregnancy.
Other disadvantages of using digital contraception
Aside from the glaringly obvious, there are other disadvantages to using digital contraception.
One of the major downsides is that a smartphone app is never going to protect you against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the same way as a condom would.
Realistically, the only way you can successfully protect yourself against STIs is by using barrier contraception like a condom or femidom – something that you need to get from a high street drug store, sexual health clinic, from your doctor or an online pharmacy. In short, using an app for contraception doesn’t provide the peace of mind and protection you get from using tried and trusted medical sources.
Conclusion: can digital contraception be trusted?
Trusting your smartphone with birth control is an ambitious aim. And although the app seems scientific on the surface, we would still take its claims with a pinch of salt.
The truth is, the temperature-taking routine that the app’s algorithm uses to establish your fertility cycle relies too much on strict adherence, not to mention failing to take into consideration the many variable factors that could also impact temperature that aren’t hormone changes.
The concept is interesting, and useful if you want to get to know your body more (as well as indicating the best days to try to conceive), but we would hesitate to recommend this as your sole method of birth control.
(Image: Unsplash)
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