“But Everything Else, I Learned Online”: School-Based and Internet-Based Sexual Learning Experiences of Heterosexual and LGBQ + Youth

Abstract

Building upon scholarship on sex education, our research aims to understand how youth with a range of sexual identities have experienced school-based sex education, how they have explored sexual content online, and how they see the two in relation to each other. We thus ask: (1) How do youth with varied sexual identities recall experiencing formal school-based sex education from elementary through high school offerings? (2) How do heterosexual and LGBQ + youth utilize the Internet and social media sites for sexual learning? Through in-depth interviews with college students, we find that heterosexual and LGBQ + youth report that formal sex education was both limited and heteronormative; LGBQ + youth felt particularly unprepared for sexual experiences and health hygiene, and sometimes found ways to translate the information provided for their own needs. Despite some overall similarities in online sexual explorations, experiences of online sexual learning proved quite divergent for youth of different sexual identities. Heterosexual youth were likely to search for information on sexual pleasure and entertainment; in contrast, LGBQ + youth sought information to fill in knowledge gaps about non-conforming sexualities, and often used the digital space for identity discovery, confirmation, and affirmation. For both groups, online explorations interacted with offline ones through a back-and-forth in which youth tested out in one arena what they had learned in the other. These findings highlight the dynamic interaction between formal school curriculum, informal online sexual learning, and sexual scripts, identities and practices.