As the world of social media continues to grow, it begins to affect other aspects of people’s lives. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are working to find ways to incorporate sexual health education into social media.

Sexual health is a topic that is often swept under the rug, and therefore, it does not receive attention when it is due, especially in the field of social networking, said Lisa Hightow-Weidman, an associate professor at the UNC School of Medicine.

‘Social networking is really ingrained as a part of our lives, and so is sexual health,’ Hightow-Weidman said. ‘But we tend to not talk about sexual health, even though most of us are sexual beings.’

Because of the importance of both sexual health and social media in students’ everyday lives, using social networking to promote healthy sex could be beneficial in making strides to change the norms of how people view sexual health, Hightow-Weidman said.

‘The more norms that we can make around having healthy and safe sex, rather than just focusing on STIs and risks related to sex, then I think that is the best thing that we could do,’ Hightow-Weidman said.

Through working with social networking and sexual health, Hightow-Weidman and other professionals are hoping to reach young adults.

‘We have to think about how we can use the technology and the mediums that young people are using every day to encourage them to think about sexual health,’ she said.

To do this, Hightow-Weidman created a website called healthMpowerment. The site was developed for African-American gay or bisexual men to educate and promote sexual health, and overall health and wellness, she said. She is working on a mobile version of healthMpowerment and on a new website, Time 2 Test, designed to encourage young people to get tested for STIs.

Hightow-Weidman said she has been experimenting with how to use apps and their features to their fullest extent.

‘We want to engage people to think about their health,’ she said.

However, Hightow-Weidman said she believes some measures, such as an app that identifies and tracks people’s sexual past and history of STIs, can take monitoring and educating people on sexual health too far. Rather, the apps should be used to get information on testing and sexual health, and to communicate with others about sexual health.

‘I think apps are great because they allow you to get information quickly,’ Hightow-Weidman said. ‘Apps are a neat way to deliver information and can be great for finding testing sites, sending reminders around testing, using the Internet to notify partners if you have an STD and just to promote testing within the community.’

Despite the introduction of websites such as Hightow-Weidman’s, she said she believes there is still more to be done to promote sexual health through social networking.

dspearl@syr.edu  

Published on April 12, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Diana: dspearl@syr.edu | @dianapearl_