Adolescents, Sexual Health, and the Internet: Possibilities, Prospects, and Challenges for Educators

Abstract

This article combines the perspectives of a classroom teacher, a community educator, and a communication consultant on the uses of the Internet as a sexuality education tool for adolescents. In American society today, there exists a scarcity of accurate, useful, and comprehensive sexual health information for adolescents, and an absence of thoughtful, honest discourse on the nature and goals of sexual health education. The Internet provides sexual health educators with unique and unprecedented opportunities to speak directly to millions of Americans about these issues, as well as with difficult and important challenges. While there are presently a number of useful Internet-based resources for adolescents, parents, and professionals on sexual health topics, there are crucial roles for sexuality educators to assume as these resources multiply, as they inevitably will. These roles relate to issues of quality, accuracy, developmental appropriateness, comprehensiveness, parent-child communication, professional...