Show and tell: Using social media to address gaps in sex education
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Who I am: Karishma Swarup, Harvard MPH student, Sexuality Educator, and creator of @TalkYouNeverGot, a sexuality education platform with 61,000+ subscribers and over 25 million views.
What I created: I run a social media page called @TalkYouNeverGot on Instagram to address the dire gap in sex education around the world, with a focus on India. The page was awarded “Influencer of the Year 2021” by the UK’s National Health Service, SH:24, and Brook. @TalkYouNeverGot has helped me forge key collaborations across countries with over 75 global media platforms, brands, educators, and sex ed organizations including Netflix and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Why it matters: Globally, 71% of young people (852 million) aged 15-24 are online and view social media as a peer-to-peer space. They turn to social media for information about sex, health, bodies, and relationships. Without evidence-based information on social media, misinformation on an already misunderstood topic is more likely to prevail. When I started my page, I wanted to address the dire need for sex education for youth. Like several cultural contexts around the world, India has no mandatory formal school-based sex education curriculum, let alone structures or systems that support sex educator training. There is very little institutional support for sex education, and the education that is institutionally supported is usually incomplete, biased, abstinence-only, or cisgender-and heterosexual-centric. I quickly realized my audience went far beyond a school- or college-going group to include young single adults, LGBTQ+ individuals, and even married couples or parents who didn’t feel adequately informed about their sexual health. Few trusted sources addressed sexuality beyond the context of childbirth. Soon, I found that over 80% of the @TalkYouNeverGot community is from India and is primarily aged 18-35.
What I learned:
- 💬 If you want people to listen, talk to them. Conversational hooks like “Things you probably didn’t get in high school sex ed” make people far more engaged on social media than “Gaps in school-based comprehensive sex education curricula.” Break down complex concepts into simple, relatable information.
- 🖼️ Make it pretty. Colorful, well-designed visuals in the form of infographics, text-based posts, and videos go a long way, especially when you are on a platform where you are competing with lifestyle, travel, and beauty content that spends a lot of effort doing just that.
- 🤷 Turn confusion into connection. My weekly “ask-me-anything” series allows the community to ask me questions. It’s not just a Q&A; it’s an exercise in building trust. People know that no matter how absurd the question, they will get a non-judgmental answer. Especially for a stigmatized topic, the audience finds it helpful to know they are not alone in what they’re feeling and to have a space to reach out with questions they dare not bring up elsewhere.
