Abstract
ABSTRACT As part of a project funded by the Wellcome Trust, we held a one-day symposium, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, to discuss priorities for research on relationships and sex education (RSE) in a world where young people increasingly live, experience, and augment their relationships (whether sexual or not) within digital spaces. The introduction of statutory RSE in schools in England highlights the need to focus on improving understandings of young people and digital intimacies for its own sake, and to inform the development of learning resources. We call for more research that puts young people at its centre; foregrounds inclusivity; and allows a nuanced discussion of pleasures, harms, risks, and rewards, which can be used by those working with young people and those developing policy. Generating such research is likely to be facilitated by participation, collaboration, and communication with beneficiaries, between disciplines and across sectors. Taking such an approach, academic researchers, practitioners, and policymakers agree that we need a better understanding of RSE’s place in lifelong learning, which seeks to understand the needs of particular groups, is concerned with non-sexual relationships, and does not see digital intimacies as disconnected from offline everyday ‘reality’.
Highlights
Adults worry about young people and their use of technology
Alongside these fundamental approaches to doing research with young people and digital intimacies to inform relationships and sex education (RSE), we identified a number of priorities for the content of research
We call for more research that is informed by the fundamental approaches outlined in this paper – work that puts young people at its centre; foregrounds inclusivity; and allows a nuanced discussion of pleasures, harms, risks and rewards, which can be used by those working with young people and those developing policy
Summary
Adults worry about young people and their use of technology. Social media and the Internet, and sexual content, in particular, are often blamed for a range of problematic outcomes among young people – from poor body image and mental health issues to bullying and coercive sexual attitudes – yet the evidence base for these claims is not always robust The research used to inform public health interventions has often struggled to keep step with technology and the.
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