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<\/p>\nBy Oisakhose Aghomo<\/p>\n
Photography By Oisakhose Aghomo<\/p>\n
Reporting Texas<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
People dance at The Library, a popular bar for college students on Sixth St. Oisakhose Aghomo, Reporting Texas<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey taught it in one of our science classes,\u201d Olvera said, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Now, their teenage counterparts will have less access to information about sex after parents\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
The new law, Senate Bill 12, further restricts access to an already limited curriculum during an often confusing and difficult time in young people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
Navigating a Minefield<\/p>\n
In findings from a study conducted by the CDC<\/a>, adolescents\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t 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,\u201d Fahs said. \u201cIt\u2019s a minefield of power dynamics, social exchange, pleasure and danger.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cGen Z are people who were born into the digital world,\u201d said Walker, associate director of sexual health programs at CommUnityCare Health Centers in Austin. \u201cThey were born into access.\u201d<\/p>\n Fahs said that although social media can be \u201chelpful,\u201d it often props up inaccuracies and norms about gender and power in \u201cproblematic ways.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHaving more robust and science-based sex education can really help people to feel more in charge of their sexual health,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n If Not Mom and Dad, Then Who?<\/p>\n Alondra Lopez, 20, felt cautioned to \u201cnot be a whore\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Instead, she heard about sex from friends and others.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s the only way I found out,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n Like Lopez, Olvera also learned about sex from her peers, and from there she went to the internet.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d Olvera said. \u201cI was like, \u2018I want to see what they are talking about.\u2019 As I got older it did become this thing of am I doing it right. Am I taking care of my body right?\u00a0 Am I doing the right thing? What is an orgasm?\u201d<\/p>\n By contrast, Austin resident Lucy Smith, 21,\u00a0 had \u201csuper different\u201d parents who helped her navigate this minefield. They helped her get on birth control in her sophomore year of high school.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n For Tristain Nichols, 28-year-old Dallas-Fort Worth native, authority figures like coaches helped him learn more about his sexual wellness.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were like you\u2019re probably going to start experimenting, so you guys should let your parents know and like also be protected and just be aware that there\u2019s STDs and stuff like that,\u201d Nichols said.<\/p>\n Texas\u2019 Shift to the \u2018Healthy Relationship\u2019 Model<\/p>\n In 2020, the State Board of Education structured the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills on sexual health, or what students are expected to learn, <\/a>to include information on puberty, sexually transmitted infections and contraceptives while promoting abstinence. Gen Z Texans who had access<\/a> to sex-ed prior were learning based on standards that hadn\u2019t been updated in 20 years, according to the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s something that we actually fixed in Texas,\u201d said Mary Elizabeth Castle, a representative for Texas Values. \u201cFor some time, when they taught about abstinence, they just basically said, don\u2019t have sex until you\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n But that curriculum still lacked essential principles, according to Sex Ed for Social Change<\/a>, an advocacy group for comprehensive sex-ed. Consent, a foundational relationship concept<\/a>, is not required to be part of the sex-ed curriculum in Texas, the group has stated.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we work with a lot of young people and we hear a lot of confusion around consent before we\u2019re even talking about consent to sexual activity,\u201d said Jen Biundo, a spokesperson for Healthy Futures, an organization that advocates for increased access to sexual health resources. \u201cWe see a lot of young people who are unsure of things like \u2026 when it\u2019s OK to ask somebody out, how to respond if somebody asks you out and you don\u2019t want to, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Biundo said that accepting the diversity of experiences in the classroom helps for a fuller conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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,\u201d she said. \u201cWe also think it\u2019s really important that sex ed should not be fully based in fear and shame.\u201d<\/p>\n