Is sex something that we should be hiding from our teenagers nowadays, or is it something we should be making them aware of?

Nowadays, parents seem terrified of the idea of their teenagers taking big steps in their relationships and although it is understandable, we should be teaching them and letting them know it isn’t something that should be hidden.

As many artists have started up world tours, there have been a couple big names that advocated strongly for women’s rights.

Within these conversations comes the access to contraceptives, which led to another talking about how it is inappropriate to promote those types of things.

A few of these artists include Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and Gracie Abrams.

Parents believe that these conversations regarding sex will lead to a negative impact on teenagers, thinking it will push the wrong agenda.

Understandably so, it is very important to be aware of the way these conversations are handled.

However, we are not seeing artists promoting sex, rather promoting the idea of ways to be safe and prepared.

Many people lead themselves to believe that there is no way teaching teenagers about sex education will lead to any positive changes, they believe that if anything it would drive them to have sex more rather than practice safe sex.

However, according to Planned Parenthood, “Research shows that sex education that’s culturally responsive and inclusive helps young people develop the social and emotional skills they need to become caring and empathetic adults. This type of sex education early and often leads to appreciation of sexual diversity, dating and intimate partner violence prevention, development of healthy relationships, prevention of child sex abuse, improved social/emotional learning, and increased media literacy. It also helps young people avoid unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.”

There are so many additional benefits to having these difficult conversations with the teenagers.

The idea that many people seem to forget is that if there’s one thing that most teenagers do best is rebel.

If you tell a teen within the ages of 16-19 to not do something, it will fuel them to do just that.

You can’t just sit and talk with your child and tell them not to have sex because it’s bad.

That just leaves so many unanswered questions running through their mind.

Especially in these times when the internet is such a wild crazy space and it could lead them to find things parents would be terrified of.

This goes back to those parents who were horrified that big name artists were “exposing” such young people to those subjects.

Which brings up two points; one being that artists are not responsible for you deciding to bring your 12-year-old daughter who you don’t want exposed to that yet.

Another being that parents need to be more aware that content their children may be consuming online could be so much worse and harmful than a planned parenthood booth preaching for safe sex.