• Sex education remains fragmented and inconsistent worldwide, a divide that hasn’t been resolved despite decades of policy commitments, leaving young people to fill gaps related to access, stigma, and inclusion.
• Meeting teens online with credible, engaging content addresses the access gap by transforming social media and digital spaces into safe, behaviorally-informed platforms for accurate sexual health information.
• Creating safe spaces for open dialogue reduces stigma by normalizing curiosity, equipping adolescents to ask questions, and fostering trust in families, classrooms, and peer-led environments.
• Embedding inclusivity throughout curricula tackles the content gap by shifting norms, affirming diverse identities, and ensuring that all students see their lives and relationships represented in education.

In many cultures around the world, the topic of sex has traditionally been considered taboo—an “issue” to be discussed strictly between parent and child and only when absolutely necessary (often, too late). Yet during the last century, formalized sex education has increasingly become commonplace in schools across the globe, often introduced in response to global and regional events. In the UK, for example, sex education guidance was issued to schools following the Second World War, amid concerns around mass relocation, parentless youths, and young men and women working together for the first time.⁵ And in African countries such as Namibia, sex education became an important part of government responses to the rising threat from HIV/AIDS.⁶

So what does sex education look like for today’s youth? UNESCO’s Global Report on Comprehensive Sexuality Education, last issued in 2021, paints a complex yet concerning situation. Despite 85 percent of the 155 countries surveyed for the report having clear policies supporting sex education, large gaps remain between policy and curricula.⁴ In the Asia Pacific region, fewer than 1 in 3 young people aged between 15 and 24 years felt that their school had taught them sex education well.¹ In the United States, studies have shown that half of teenage students don’t receive sex education that meets minimum federal standards.² And in sub-Saharan Africa, only 37 percent of young people know about HIV transmission and prevention.⁴ Sadly, many students across the globe receive no sex education at all. 

Then there’s the issue of content. Some schools still teach abstinence-only programs that evidence shows do little to change outcomes.³ In the United States, for example, Black women and girls are more likely to receive abstinence-only-until-marriage instruction,¹⁶ resulting in poorer reproductive health outcomes for this group. Other programs offer a comprehensive exploration of all things biological but strip away the most relevant content, such as consent and healthy relationships. Cultural and social norms often compound the problem: stigma discourages young people from asking questions, while some communities view sex education as taboo. In several countries, religious norms forbid sex education until after marriage. And for LGBTQ+ teens, the silence is even more profound, amounting to erasure in some contexts. 

If we want to close the sex education gap, we need to recognize that behavior—what teens ask, share, and believe—is driven as much by stigma, norms, and biases as by facts. This is where behavioral science can help: by showing us how to create education that resonates with how teens actually live and learn, and reshapes the way we talk about one of the most fundamental parts of human life.

When formal sex education is missing, delayed, or diluted, young people don’t stop asking questions. Instead, they simply turn elsewhere for answers. Increasingly, that “elsewhere” is online. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have become the default classrooms, while AI tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly being used as alternatives to traditional peer support, with some young people reporting that they prefer asking chatbots over friends when it comes to questions about sex and relationships.⁸ Not only do online platforms provide sex education content in a more aesthetically pleasing and accessible way, but these spaces also offer a degree of anonymity for young users. 

The problem is not the curiosity of adolescents; that is healthy and necessary. It's the quality of what they encounter online. A recent scoping review of sexual health misinformation on social media found that misleading claims are widespread, particularly around contraception and HPV vaccination, where false stories often gain more traction than fact-based messages.⁹ In fact, young people on YouTube and TikTok are more likely to receive information from social influencers about stopping hormonal contraception than they are about how to properly use contraception or have safe sex.¹¹

And it’s not just unqualified influencers that are exacerbating the problem. In 2017, for example, Australia’s national broadcaster released a series questioning the safety of long-acting reversible contraceptives.⁹ The coverage leaned heavily on women’s negative testimonials circulating on social media and went further by amplifying conspiracy theories—suggesting pharmaceutical companies pushed contraceptive pills for profit and that clinicians downplayed regulatory data to encourage use. By combining personal anecdotes with provocative narratives, these stories spread widely online, reinforcing fears and fueling misinformation that outpaced the scientific evidence.

Evidence suggests that pornography is also becoming a preferred medium among curious teenagers. In a UK study, researchers found that nearly half of teenagers who reported being dissatisfied with the sex education they received said they turned to pornography as a primary source of information about sex. This material, however, is not designed for education, where consent is rarely modeled and gender stereotypes are exaggerated.¹⁰ These portrayals can shape unrealistic expectations around intimacy and consent, making the gap between education and reality even greater.

Behavioral science helps explain why misinformation shared on social media gains such traction among adolescents. When answers are delayed or absent in formal sex education, young people gravitate toward whatever feels most immediate and memorable. This is an example of the availability heuristic, or our tendency to make decisions based on the most easily accessible information. Similarly, affect heuristics mean that vivid anecdotes and emotionally charged stories stick in the mind far more easily than abstract statistics. In other words, we are more likely to be impacted by a post that makes us feel something emotionally, rather than just giving us simple advice or information. 

This challenge is underscored by interventions that attempt to myth-bust misinformation or poor-quality sex education found online. Traditional fact-check campaigns or classroom corrections struggle against the sheer volume, speed, and emotional pull of popular content. Reviews of health-related social media campaigns show that while corrections can reduce belief in specific myths, they rarely match the reach or memorability of misleading posts.¹²

The situation is similar for young people using tools like ChatGPT. Unlike asking friends or family for advice, there is no risk of embarrassment and no visible signal to others. And because responses arrive instantly, the tool aligns with present bias—our tendency to prioritize immediate answers over delayed but potentially more reliable ones.

The access gap is therefore not only about the absence of formal education. It is about the vacuum created in its place, one increasingly filled by algorithms that amplify myths and half-truths. Unless addressed, this cycle will continue to reinforce misinformation and confusion at the very moment when young people need clarity most.

If social media has become a de facto classroom, the solution is not to ignore it but to meet young people there with credible, engaging, and timely information. Doing so requires moving beyond the traditional model of classroom-based lessons and embracing formats that resonate with how teens already consume and share knowledge. 

Behavioral science suggests that young people are more likely to engage with information that is immediate, accessible, and identity-affirming.¹⁵ When content is framed in ways that speak to their lived realities—rather than lecturing from authority—it becomes more memorable and trustworthy. Human-centered design echoes this: interventions succeed when they are created with audiences in mind, reflecting their aspirations, aesthetics, and communication styles. 

Take, for example, the @TalkYouNeverGot Instagram account developed by Karishma Swarup, a Harvard MPH student and sexuality educator. The focus of the project is on India, where there is no mandatory formal sex education curriculum and a complete lack of sex education training structures. Swarup’s account filled this huge gap with engaging, evidence-based content that has attracted more than 60,000 subscribers.¹⁴ Posts tackle topics that formal curricula tend to avoid packaged in visually compelling infographics, short videos, and conversation-starters designed to compete with lifestyle or entertainment posts in users’ feeds. Weekly “Ask Me Anything” sessions allow followers to submit questions anonymously, receiving non-judgmental, evidence-based responses. This format lowers the stigma cost of asking questions and creates a safe digital environment for curiosity that formal institutions rarely provide.

Why does this work where fact-checking campaigns so often fail? The answer lies in how information is processed. Social media myths spread because they are vivid, emotional, and easy to share—advantages that traditional health education has rarely matched. @TalkYouNeverGot borrows these tools for accuracy: bold design makes content visually memorable, conversational hooks (such as “Things you probably didn’t learn in school”) make it feel personally relevant, and the platform’s interactivity gives followers a sense of agency. From a behavioral perspective, this approach reduces friction, exploits the availability heuristic by making accurate information more top-of-mind, and provides emotional resonance to counter the affective pull of misinformation.

On a broader level, this model demonstrates that combating misinformation is not about overwhelming audiences with more facts, but about redesigning how accurate information is packaged, delivered, and experienced. By combining the immediacy of social media with the insights of behavioral science and the principles of human-centered design, interventions like @TalkYouNeverGot create sex education that resonates with how teens and young adults actually learn today. To close the access gap, we must meet young people in their feeds and speak their language.

However, just because young people find online content interesting and engaging doesn’t mean that this translates into their actions. This challenge is exemplified by a novel social media knowledge translation initiative called “MisconSEXions,” which aimed to debunk common myths about sexuality.¹³ While the initiative was successful in reducing viewers’ endorsements of sex-based myths, teenagers were reluctant to directly engage with the content online and reported mixed feelings regarding the impact of the content on their lives. In other words, there’s still a gap between what young people see and what they do regarding online sex education. 

Stigma around sexual and reproductive health has deep roots in cultural traditions and belief systems. Across societies, menstruation was (and in some countries still is) treated as a source of impurity, with women being excluded from everyday activities or rituals.¹⁶ In Europe and North America, Puritan ideals cast self-denial as a moral virtue, turning sex into something suspect or shameful. Over time, these patterns of exclusion and suspicion hardened into institutions, shaping how religions taught morality, how schools structured their lessons, and how popular media depicted sex. This stigma has shaped social norms around sex and reproductive health, leading to a public health crisis: people avoid seeking education and care, leading to negative outcomes such as STIs, unwanted pregnancies, and poor mental health.¹⁶

Today, social stigma around sex and relationships prevails at a global level, impacting both access to and the information included in sex education. In many African contexts, stigma is reinforced through cultural and religious norms that explicitly forbid open discussion of sex before marriage. Adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa often report that conversations about sex within families are limited to warnings against “bad behavior,” rather than honest guidance about bodies, consent, or contraception.¹⁸ And in some countries, sex education materials actually reinforce harmful stigmas around sex, particularly those directed towards women and girls. In China, for example, a high school sex education textbook was found to describe girls who have premarital sex as “sacrificing their bodies” and “degraded.”²¹ These stereotypes can shape how students view both themselves and their relationships for life, leading to harmful practices in adulthood.

A lot of the stigma around sex education comes from how topics are framed and delivered. In one study, conducted in the UK by the charity SafeLives, researchers found that the way in which Relationships & Sexual Education (RSE) classes were delivered in secondary schools reinforced feelings of shame. That is, classes focused on risks, negative consequences, and “caution,” rather than open dialogue and agency. Only 58 percent of students reported feeling comfortable or very comfortable during RSE classes, with most respondents calling for safer, more open spaces to ask questions.²² 

This problem is often more pronounced within specific racial groups due to intersecting stigmatization. A study conducted in the United States looked at Black women’s sexual education experiences in the southern states of North Carolina and Georgia.¹⁷ Regardless of where participants’ early lessons about bodies and sexuality came from—be it family, school, church, peers, or media— the dominant message was one of caution, shame, and stigma. They also described how Black girls tend to be sexualized from a young age and subjected to unwanted attention or discipline that marked their bodies as problematic. This “othering,” tied to their race, gender, and age, often left them feeling disconnected from their own developing sexuality. Rather than providing spaces for open questions around sexuality, these women and girls’ sex education consisted of fear-based warnings about pregnancy, sin, or financial ruin. 

From a behavioral perspective, stigma functions like a powerful social cost. Theories of social norms tell us that individuals adjust their behavior to match what they perceive to be typical and desirable.¹⁹ Known as the conformity bias, this is especially acute in adolescence, a life stage marked by heightened sensitivity to peer approval.²⁰  If asking a question risks embarrassment or judgment, the “cost” of curiosity outweighs the potential benefits of learning. Despite a level of anonymity afforded by online spaces, these behaviors are also seen in digital environments. As the MisconSEXions campaign demonstrates, although young people privately consume accurate information, they often hesitate to publicly endorse it—as liking or sharing these posts would signal personal interest in sex.¹³ 

The weight of silence and stigma acts as both a cultural and behavioral barrier. Young people know they have questions, but the costs of asking appear too high. Unless sex education addresses and adapts to these hidden costs, silence will continue to govern how adolescents access, or fail to access, appropriate and accurate information. 

If stigma is one of the greatest barriers to comprehensive sex education, then the solution must begin with creating spaces where adolescents feel safe enough to speak, ask, and listen. 

The WISE Girls (Wisdom and Information on Sexual Education by Girls) project in Jordan, developed by Mercy Corps in collaboration with IDEO.org, demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach in improving sex education outcomes. In refugee camps such as Za’atari and Azraq, displaced Syrian girls face heavy cultural taboos around puberty and menstruation, combined with social norms that limit their decision-making and mobility. 

To counter this harmful mix, the program created peer-led safe spaces where girls could learn about their bodies and share experiences. Anchored by a storybook about “Zahra,” a girl experiencing her first period, sessions were interactive and designed by girls themselves. They were held in private caravans furnished by the participants with bright decorations and accessible bathrooms to provide a physical space that signaled safety and dignity. But what made this program so impactful was the fact that the peer educators who facilitated the session were only slightly older than the girls they taught (older teens supporting “tweens,” which reduced the authority gap that often fuels shame. The results of the program pilot showed that over 90% of girls reported increased knowledge and confidence in managing puberty. For many, it was the first time they felt able to voice their questions without fear or risk of prejudice.

In other contexts, fostering spaces that bring families and communities into the conversation about sex and relationships can also reduce stigma. The Get Real curriculum, developed by the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, is a comprehensive sex education program for middle and high school students in Boston Public Schools. With a focus on social and emotional skills as a key component of healthy relationships and responsible decision making, teachers are trained to foster classroom environments where questions are normalized rather than penalized. However, one of the most important aspects of the program is that students are given take-home activities to complete with their parents or caregivers, encouraging intergenerational conversations that are often avoided because of stigma. 

The outcomes of the Get Real curriculum speak to stigma reduction as much as they do to health behavior change. In a randomized trial, Get Real was found to significantly delay sexual initiation, particularly among boys, and increase contraceptive use among sexually active students.²³ Students also reported more open communication with their parents. By creating safe spaces both within the classroom and at home, Get Real successfully broke down the fear that conversations about sex are inherently shameful.

These examples demonstrate that, in order to close the sex education gap, young people need spaces where curiosity feels safe and actively encouraged. Beyond dedicated physical spaces with peer leaders or curricula that involve family engagement, a safe spaces approach could be expanded into online contexts. This could include moderated forums or private channels where anonymity reduces anxieties around asking questions. For example, Planned Parenthood’s sexual health chatbot called “Roo” offers free and private conversations for young people wanting to talk about the things they “don’t want to ask out loud.” ²⁴ In its first nine months, Roo had 3.5 million conversations with young people, demonstrating the potential for leveraging the new digital channels that young people feel most comfortable engaging with. 

Even where sex education is available, many adolescents remain invisible within its lessons. For young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, curricula often erase their realities entirely. Even when LGBTQ+ sexuality is included, many teenagers find it unhelpful due to a lack of appropriate terminology and sexual health-specific language relating to gender identity.²⁶  This content gap goes beyond omission: it sends a message that only certain kinds of relationships and bodies are legitimate, while others are “not normal.” The result is a system that leaves LGBTQ+ youth without accurate information, without affirmation, and often without safety.

In the United States, a 2023 review by the Guttmacher Institute found that only 38 percent of high schools covered sexual orientation and just 21 percent addressed gender identity.²⁴ In several states, restrictive legislation has intensified this erasure; of the 21 U.S. states (plus the District of Columbia) that have policies on how sexual orientation and gender identity may be addressed in classrooms, only eight of them explicitly require instruction that is inclusive of diverse sexualities and gender identities. 

In contrast, seven states mandate that any discussion must portray non-heterosexual orientations or non-cisgender identities as shameful, unacceptable, or even illegal. Another ten states restrict or prohibit discussion altogether—policies often referred to as “Don’t Say Gay” laws.²⁴ The result is that LGBTQ+ students not only lack the guidance and information they need, they also don’t feel seen. GLSEN’s 2021 national survey, for example, reported that fewer than one in five LGBTQ+ students felt their school curriculum represented them.

The same story can be seen at a global level. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, sexuality education either excludes or actively condemns LGBTQ+ identities, aligning with laws that criminalize same-sex relationships.²⁷ In Uganda, for example, there was public outcry in response to a curriculum provided by a Dutch NGO, which was deemed to be teaching students “homosexuality.”²⁸ Even in countries where policies endorse inclusivity, teachers and schools frequently avoid the subject, fearing backlash from parents or communities. In the UK, attempts to include LGBTQ-inclusive content in schools across the country resulted in protests from local communities, particularly in areas where religious norms clashed with the proposed content. 

For many students, the omission of, and backlash against, LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education poses a severe problem: identity threat. When adolescents cannot see their lives or identities acknowledged in a curriculum, they infer that their experiences are illegitimate or shameful.²⁹ This, in turn, can have a significant impact on students’ mental health. Evidence from The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, suggests that teenagers who found their school to be LGBTQ-affirming reported lower rates of attempting suicide. Thus, the inclusion gap reaches far beyond access to, and representation within, sex education; it can profoundly impact students’ lives and wellbeing.

Closing the inclusion gap requires more than adding a token mention of “diverse identities.” It means embedding sexual orientation and gender identity throughout lessons, school culture, and teacher training so that all students learn that these realities are normal and valued. Evidence shows that LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education improves health and school climate outcomes for everyone, not just LGBTQ+ students.²⁶ 

Fortunately, conversations around how to improve sex education for LGBTQ+ youth have increased greatly in recent years, particularly in response to the erosion of LGBTQ+ rights in democratic societies across the world. For example, in Canada, the province of Ontario implemented a revised curriculum in 2019 that explicitly included lessons on sexual orientation, gender identity, and same-sex relationships. Despite initial backlash, surveys of students and teachers showed that inclusive content reduced bullying and improved classroom safety.³¹ From a behavioral perspective, this demonstrates the power of descriptive norms: when students see diversity openly discussed in class, they perceive it as part of what is typical and acceptable, rather than marginal or deviant.

In many countries, the issue of inclusive sexuality education is still being reviewed and debated by governments, policymakers, and education charities. Recent reforms—such as New Zealand’s updated guidelines—have taken steps toward greater recognition of gender diversity, but they still stop short of fully including diverse sexualities.³⁰ Too often, change means adjusting the margins rather than rethinking the core. What’s needed is a reimagining of sexuality education that goes beyond listing identities to actively questioning the norms that exclude them. 

A norm-critical approach, for example, is about choosing language carefully to avoid unnecessary gendering, addressing sexual practices openly rather than through euphemism, and challenging the hidden assumptions that reinforce heterosexuality as the default. This could be asking students to analyze how media portrayals of couples reinforce heteronormativity and encouraging them to notice and challenge bias in their everyday environments. This strategy leverages framing effects—changing the lens through which information is presented—to reshape attitudes in ways that facts alone rarely achieve. By shifting from additive tweaks to critical reflection, sex education can move from token recognition to genuine inclusivity.

It would be naïve to treat any of these interventions as cure-alls. Sex education is deeply entangled with culture, politics, and identity, and the same factors that create the gaps also limit the solutions. Meeting teens online still means competing with an ecosystem where algorithms reward the outrageous over the accurate, and where the very features that make platforms attractive—speed, anonymity, emotional punch—can undermine the careful nuance of education. 

Safe spaces, whether peer-led groups in refugee camps or structured classroom environments, demand resources, training, and ongoing community support; without these, programs can collapse after the pilot phase or trigger backlash when cultural taboos are challenged too quickly. Inclusive curricula, while essential, are also politically fragile: even small references to LGBTQ+ content can be diluted, delayed, or rolled back under pressure from organized opposition. 

And across all interventions, behavioral science warns us that knowledge alone rarely changes action. Social stigma, peer dynamics, and reputational costs still exert powerful pressure, meaning that learning doesn’t always translate into healthier decisions. Real progress depends on layering approaches, tailoring them to each unique context, and rigorously evaluating not just what young people know, but what they feel safe enough to do.

The sex education gap is not a single void but multiple overlapping challenges: access, stigma, and inclusion. We’ve seen how inadequate sex education provision in schools drives young people online, where misinformation and pornography become default teachers. We’ve explored how stigma erodes curiosity, keeping adolescents from asking questions that matter most to their health and relationships. And we’ve examined how curricula that erase LGBTQ+ identities deny whole groups of students the knowledge and affirmation they need. Each of these gaps leaves young people without reliable tools at one of the most critical moments in their lives.

However, there are promising opportunities for change. Meeting teens online shows us how design and behavioral insights can transform digital spaces into credible classrooms. Creating safe spaces, whether in refugee camps or Boston classrooms, reveals how stigma can be dismantled when curiosity is normalized and dialogue encouraged. And reimagining inclusion through norm-critical approaches and systemic reforms demonstrates how schools can move beyond token mentions to cultivate empathy, belonging, and healthier outcomes for all. Together, these strategies show that sex education can evolve into something more human-centered, evidence-based, and globally relevant than ever before.

Scaling this vision requires moving beyond piecemeal reforms. Just as the challenges are global, so too must be the solutions. That means international cooperation, local adaptation, and a willingness to confront political and cultural resistance head-on. Above all, it means acknowledging that sex education is not a marginal subject but a foundation for healthier, safer, more equitable societies.

At The Decision Lab, we specialize in applying behavioral science to precisely these kinds of complex, sensitive challenges. By integrating behavioral insights with human-centered design, we help organizations turn abstract ideals into practical interventions that change behavior on the ground. Partner with us to co-create the next generation of sex education—one that closes gaps, dismantles stigma, and ensures every adolescent, everywhere, grows up with the knowledge, confidence, and dignity they deserve.

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The sexual overperception bias, which predominantly occurs in men, relates to the tendency to overperceive another individual’s sexual interest in oneself. In this article, we look at the underlying mechanism behind this bias, how it manifests itself at an individual and systematic level, and what can be done to avoid it. 

Implicit Bias, Gender - And Why We Are All Culprits

Sex education is often criticized for its lack of discussion around gender, and in particular, gender identity. In this article, Namrata Raju opens up about her experiences with implicit gender bias and how, at some level, we’re all culprits. Drawing on recent behavioral research, she offers sage advice on how we can identify and combat our gender biases for more inclusive communities. 

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