Why some social media sites are linked to risky sexual behavior in young teens

An error occurred while preparing your download

Why some social media sites are linked to risky sexual behavior in young teens

Study finds differences in interactive vs. informational sites

If young teens use social media to learn about sexual health, it is better if they use sites like YouTube rather than ones like Snapchat, a new study shows.

Researchers found that middle-schoolers were less likely to be motivated to engage in risky sexual behaviors if they sought information from primarily informational sites rather than ones that are more about interaction with peers.

Many previous studies have found that use of social media is related to poorer health outcomes for adolescents, but this research suggests that "not all social media is the same," said Eric Anderman, co-author of the new study and professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University.

"Adolescents have better outcomes when they rely on sites where they can get accurate information rather than sites where they are mostly hearing from other teens."

The study was published online yesterday (Sept. 15, 2025) in the journal Health Psychology.

The study was a joint project between Ohio State and Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus. It involved 2,691 seventh and eighth graders in a large urban school district in the Midwest.

All students were enrolled in a sexual health class using the Get Realcurriculum, which is used nationwide. This includes nine 45-50-minute lessons each year, delivered over two weeks by a professional health educator. It emphasizes social and emotional skills as a key component of healthy relationships and responsible decision making.

The researchers surveyed the students five times during the seventh and eighth grades, both before and after the Get Real sessions.

At each of the surveys, students were asked about three sexual health issues that were discussed in the Get Real curriculum: their ability to refuse unwanted sex, their ability to negotiate the use of condoms and their intentions to have sex.

Students were also asked to indicate how likely they were to use each of eight social media platforms to get information about sexual health or human sexuality. The platforms were TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Google.

Results showed that, overall, the curriculum helped reduce risky behavior in the students. But their use of social media to investigate sexual health topics did have an impact, Anderman said.

And the results were different for those who relied more heavily on social media that focuses on interactivity with peers - Snapchat, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and Instagram - compared to less interactive and more informational sites, like YouTube, TikTok and Google.

Use of interactive sites was linked to lower ability to refuse sexual activity, while use of informational sites wasn't related to that ability, the study found.

Those who relied more on interactive sites had a lower ability to negotiate the use of condoms, while those who used informational sites had a greater ability, results showed.

Finally, the use of interactive sites was linked to higher intentions to have sex, whereas the use of informational social media was unrelated to sexual intentions.

All of these results were found after taking into account a variety of other factors that could relate to sexual decision making, Anderman said. That includes student GPA, parents' education, race and ethnicity, and sex and gender. The researchers also asked students about their honesty in completing the surveys and sensation seeking - their interest in risky activities.

"The bottom line is that using informational social media sites didn't result in bad things happening, but using interactive sites did," Anderman said.

The reason may be that interactive sites encourage the spread of misinformation among teens who don't have accurate knowledge, he explained.

"Many kids do use interactive sites to get sexual health information and they very seldom fact check what they find."

Anderman said it is important for parents to talk to their children about social media use: Make it clear that not all sites are the same, and they need to be careful about where they go to get information about sexual health.

"Let them know that just because someone tells you something on Snapchat, that doesn't mean it is true," he said.

"Teens need to hear that from parents, they need to hear that from teachers, they need to hear it from multiple places."

Anderman recalled that one of the seventh graders taking the Get Real curriculum, in an opportunity to ask anonymous questions, asked if it was true that girls could not get pregnant the first time they had sex.

"That's an example of one of those things kids may be hearing on some social media. We want to make sure that they don't take these kinds of statements as true, that they go to places where they can get the right information," he said.

Co-authors of the study were Hyun Ji Lee, a former postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State who is now an assistant professor at Hunter College; Yvonne Allsop, who received her PhD at Ohio State and is now an assistant professor at Eastern Michigan University; Yue Sheng, who received her PhD at Ohio State and is now an assistant professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham; and Mary Kay Irwin, senior director of School-Based Health at Nationwide Children's Hospital.

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs.

More Ohio State News