By Oisakhose Aghomo

Photography By Oisakhose Aghomo

Reporting Texas

People dance at The Library, a popular bar for college students on Sixth St. Oisakhose Aghomo, Reporting Texas

For 24 year-old Kazey Olvera, sex-ed classes at her North Texas high school were the closest she ever got to the birds and the bees.

“They taught it in one of our science classes,” Olvera said, “I never had the sex talk or even really the period talk growing up. My parents were very strict. Sex and dating culture has been insane trying to figure it out on my own.”

Olvera is not alone. Experts say Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, is struggling to navigate real-life sex and dating culture in a digital age, and research points to this generation having less sex.

Now, their teenage counterparts will have less access to information about sex after parents’ rights groups successfully lobbied for a new law that restricts Texas schools from teaching sex education or providing student health services unless parents have specifically authorized it.

The new law, Senate Bill 12, further restricts access to an already limited curriculum during an often confusing and difficult time in young people’s lives.

Navigating a Minefield

In findings from a study conducted by the CDC, adolescents’ sexual activity decreased from 2013 to 2023 with 32% of high school students reporting they had sex in 2023 as opposed to 47% in 2013. Study participants also reported less condom use and testing rates.

Dr. Breanne Fahs, clinical psychologist and professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, said the function of sex has changed in society.

“I don’t think sex has had a primarily reproductive function in quite some time. I think that sex is largely a social act rather than a reproductive one,” Fahs said. “It’s a minefield of power dynamics, social exchange, pleasure and danger.”

In her work at their IDEALhealth sexual health clinic, Dr. Crystal Walker has seen people come in with questions about things they heard of on TikTok and other social media.

“Gen Z are people who were born into the digital world,” said Walker, associate director of sexual health programs at CommUnityCare Health Centers in Austin. “They were born into access.”

Fahs said that although social media can be “helpful,” it often props up inaccuracies and norms about gender and power in “problematic ways.”

“Having more robust and science-based sex education can really help people to feel more in charge of their sexual health,” she said.

If Not Mom and Dad, Then Who?

Alondra Lopez, 20, felt cautioned to “not be a whore” growing up. She barely remembers sex-ed during her adolescence in the Rio Grande Valley, with the exception of watching birthing videos in health class.

Instead, she heard about sex from friends and others.  “That’s the only way I found out,” Lopez said.

Like Lopez, Olvera also learned about sex from her peers, and from there she went to the internet.

“I feel like I grew a sexual addiction very early on. I remember being very young watching porn and like looking up boys and girls kissing,” Olvera said. “I was like, ‘I want to see what they are talking about.’ As I got older it did become this thing of am I doing it right. Am I taking care of my body right?  Am I doing the right thing? What is an orgasm?”

By contrast, Austin resident Lucy Smith, 21,  had “super different” parents who helped her navigate this minefield. They helped her get on birth control in her sophomore year of high school.

“I could ask them anything and they would let me know honestly and truthfully. I think my parents are super open about things that I think a lot more parents should be,” she said.

For Tristain Nichols, 28-year-old Dallas-Fort Worth native, authority figures like coaches helped him learn more about his sexual wellness.

“They were like you’re probably going to start experimenting, so you guys should let your parents know and like also be protected and just be aware that there’s STDs and stuff like that,” Nichols said.

Texas’ Shift to the ‘Healthy Relationship’ Model

In 2020, the State Board of Education structured the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills on sexual health, or what students are expected to learn, to include information on puberty, sexually transmitted infections and contraceptives while promoting abstinence. Gen Z Texans who had access to sex-ed prior were learning based on standards that hadn’t been updated in 20 years, according to the New York Times.

Texas Values, a Christian values organization that lobbies for parents rights and abstinence-focused sex-curriculum, advocated for the updates to focus more on healthy relationship formation.

“That’s something that we actually fixed in Texas,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, a representative for Texas Values. “For some time, when they taught about abstinence, they just basically said, don’t have sex until you’re married. In the health standards in 2020, they actually talked about healthy family formation. They talked about the social kind of emotional risk of engaging in sexual activity before you get to know a person.”

But that curriculum still lacked essential principles, according to Sex Ed for Social Change, an advocacy group for comprehensive sex-ed. Consent, a foundational relationship concept, is not required to be part of the sex-ed curriculum in Texas, the group has stated.

“So we work with a lot of young people and we hear a lot of confusion around consent before we’re even talking about consent to sexual activity,” said Jen Biundo, a spokesperson for Healthy Futures, an organization that advocates for increased access to sexual health resources. “We see a lot of young people who are unsure of things like … when it’s OK to ask somebody out, how to respond if somebody asks you out and you don’t want to, right?”

Biundo said that accepting the diversity of experiences in the classroom helps for a fuller conversation.

“We know that in any classroom, there are likely to be young people who have been sexually active, who may have been sexually abused, who may be young parents,” she said. “We also think it’s really important that sex ed should not be fully based in fear and shame.”

Regardless, parents have the final say over whether their child will be exposed to the TEKs standards. In 2021, House Bill 1525 introduced a policy in which schools would have to get parental permission for a child to take sex ed; before that, parents had to opt out. This was a temporary policy set to expire in 2024. Advocates for opt-in began to work to make it permanent before its expiration.

“For a couple of legislative sessions, we have advocated for a single standalone bill that would allow for opt-in for sex ed,” Castle said. “However, they were not successful. They were successful in the Senate chamber, actually passed … but we did not have as success when it came to the Texas House.”

Then last year, the opt-in policy was approved by the Legislature as part of  SB 12.

“Sometimes even if it’s a good curriculum, a parent may feel that it’s their role as a parent to have that conversation with their child,” Castle said. “They’re like, OK, I want to be the first person to talk to my child about sex before the teacher, so I’m gonna not opt them in in fourth grade because I’m going to talk to them about it.”

Lopez believes schools should step in, especially for children who don’t have parents who can or want to teach them about sex.

“I feel like it’s the bare minimum that they should be teaching teens what’s going on,” Lopez said. “Because that’s when children are experimenting with sex. That’s the least they could do for us.”