Background

The literature on young adults’ sex education has mostly focused broadly on sources of information rather than the learning of particular sexual topics. Studies have found differences between men and women in their sex education (e.g., men learn more from pornography while women learn more from their mothers), yet few of these studies have included sexual minority emerging adults. This begs the following question: What do young, straight, and LGBTQ men and women learn about sex and from whom?

Methods

This study asked 399 straight, and LGBTQ men and women (ages 18–25) to rate, on a scale of 0–4, how much information they had obtained about 13 topics from 7 sources of information. Data were collected in 2014–2015.

Results

Results show that young adults learn mainly about sexual risks and reproduction from school, physicians and parents, while they turn to the Internet, peers, partners and pornography to fill the gap. Men obtained more information from pornography about the pleasurable aspects of sexuality than did women, while straight women learned more about these topics from their partners than did other groups. Women also received more information concerning reproduction than did men.

Conclusions

These results confirm that young adults learn much of what interests them most about sex from informal sources such as peers, partners and the Internet. Pornography may also play an inordinate role in young people’s understanding of sexuality. Our approaches to sex education must change if we want to truly have an impact on young adults’ diverse sexualities.

中文翻译：

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年轻，加拿大，异性恋和LGBTQ男女从性中学到了些什么，以及从谁那里学到什么？

背景

有关青年人性教育的文献大多侧重于信息来源，而不是学习特定的性话题。研究发现，男女在性教育方面存在差异（例如，男性从色情内容中学到更多，而女性从母亲那里学到更多），但这些研究中很少有新兴的性少数群体出现。这就引出了以下问题：年轻，异性恋和LGBTQ男女从中学到了什么？

方法

这项研究要求399名直线型和LGBTQ的男性和女性（18-25岁）以0-4级进行评分，他们从7种信息来源中获得了13个主题的信息量。数据收集于2014–2015年。

结果

结果表明，年轻人主要从学校，医生和父母那里学习性风险和生殖知识，而他们则通过互联网，同龄人，伴侣和色情制品来填补空白。与女性相比，男性从色情制品中获得的性乐趣方面的信息更多，而与异族相比，异性恋女性从伴侣那里学到了更多有关这些话题的信息。妇女也比男子得到了更多有关生殖的信息。

结论

这些结果证实，年轻人从非正式资源（例如同龄人，伴侣和互联网）中学到了很多他们最感兴趣的性知识。色情也可能在年轻人对性的理解中起过重要的作用。如果我们想对年轻人的不同性行为产生真正的影响，那么我们的性教育方法就必须改变。