Many young people say they haven’t talked to their health care provider about sexual health, including HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, condoms, birth control, and making sexual decisions.
A 2022 National Coalition for Sexual Health survey found that 85 percent of young people wish they could talk about these topics more openly in their relationships. But for most, these conversations are awkward, induce anxiety, and are avoided altogether.
To better understand ways health workers can improve their outreach in the communities they serve, Public Good News spoke with Shadeen Francis, a licensed marriage and family psychotherapist, board-certified sex therapist, and president-elect of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. Francis shared her tips and more about a new multimedia campaign with which NCSH aims to empower Gen Z and those who care about them to engage in open and honest conversations.
Here’s what she said.
[Editor’s note: The contents of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.]
PGN: Can you share more about your work and your approach?
Shadeen Francis: I’m the incoming president for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. We support and equip sexuality professionals to do the best quality work that our communities deserve.
As a sex and relationship therapist, I believe that the world is about relationships, and it’s really important to me to help you feel better. And when I say that, I don’t mean I want you to feel good.
I mean I want you to be better at feeling your emotional presence in the world, in your work, but especially in your relationships: relationship to self, relationship to others, relationship to planet, relationship to purpose, to spirit, or God, or whomever.
PGN: How can health workers better connect with the young people they serve? How can they support them in making more informed decisions about their sexual health?
S.F.: A big part of the Own the Awk campaign that NCSH just launched is normalizing that yeah, these conversations can be awkward. Sex and relationships are fun and meaningful. And relationships are also skills that we need to practice.
Largely, what happens is we just stop talking to young adults. [Perhaps] they have gotten whatever sex ed happened at school. They’ve had ‘The Talk’ already.
Many of them have had early versions of relationships, or maybe relationships that they experienced as serious at this point. But there’s a big gap between what young folks say they need and what they actually got.
So how do we stay in conversation with young people? For people who are working with young adults, or parents who want to continue being a part of their young adults’ lives, it’s about embracing the awkwardness.
A lot of the time, a lot of conversations don’t happen or are missed because the people who are holding more information also feel uncomfortable.
It starts with the older adults in the conversation knowing that feeling uncomfortable in these conversations is normal, and we need to be able to sit and tolerate our own discomfort in order to be able to meet young folks where they are.
PGN: Can you share more on what this might look like in practice?
S.F.: So this isn’t just, ‘I give you the information.’ This is about ‘How do we share an emotional experience?’ Because relationships are emotional experiences.
Young adults do not want to be lectured. They have questions and they want to be having conversations.
So, are you willing to be a real person in this exchange, or are you trying to be a teacher, an educator?
Are you trying to come at this as a parent, rather than someone who cares and might have answers or solutions? But a conversation requires your own vulnerability, and it also requires you to listen.
You’re listening for an opportunity to better understand, and you’re listening for opportunities to also learn that the world that young adults are living in is different from the worlds that their parents grew up in.
PGN: What are some barriers or assumptions that Gen Z face that health workers should be aware of?
S.F.: There is a dismissal of the significance of having relationship-based guidance. I think health workers, parents, and other adults feel reassured that this generation of young people has all of the information at their disposal.
And that’s right. Like, if you need to know something, you can Google, right?
They’re not Googling it. They’re looking it up on YouTube, or on TikTok, maybe on Instagram, Discord, Reddit.
They turn to digital sources of information, but nothing replaces the kind of sharing and vulnerability that happens in the context of a real dialog and young adults feel that gap in their lives.
It’s not the same to Google it and get a 30-second TikTok response to being able to have a conversation where you can actually talk through the nuances and the specifics of your experience or of your question.
Even though they have a wide array of access to information, what they are lacking is intimate relationships, and they’re not having these same deep conversations with their peers in the way that people are expecting them to.
They’re actually the loneliest and most anxious cohort that has ever existed, right? The data shows that young adults are more anxious.
Technology is a tool, but it cannot replace the value of a relationship.