Social media as sources of sexual health knowledge: A compensatory or complementary form of education?

Recent research has shown that information about sexuality is increasingly prevalent on social media. At the same time, it is well-documented that sexual health content shared or created by laypeople can be misleading or inaccurate. This study investigates who consumes sexual health knowledge on these platforms and tests whether social media technologies have a compensatory (i.e., making up for a lack of sexual education elsewhere) or complementary (i.e., enhancing sexual information individuals obtain elsewhere) function for sexual education. Results from a survey conducted in early 2023 among N = 1,245 adult social media users living in Germany (age: M = 41.94 years, SD = 14.47; gender identity: 50.3% identified as female, 49.3% as male, 0.4% as other) indicated that young, male, and highly educated individuals are more likely to be exposed to sexual education on social media. Among participants, 54.1% indicated that they encounter sexual misinformation at least sometimes. Findings further provide evidence for both mechanisms—educational compensation and educational enhancement: Individuals with stronger sexual communication apprehension, as well as those who tend to engage in sexuality-related talk in everyday life, expose themselves more frequently to sexual education. These findings have implications for theory building in the field of informal education processes through contemporary technologies and for the design of sexuality-related educational interventions.