Media

At the Flemingdon Health Centre, a 17-year-old boy paces and speaks nervously into his phone. “Yo bro. Yeah, I’m at the sexual health clinic. I was just thinking it’s a good time to get tested, after … yeah, that,” he stammers. A receptionist approaches and asks his name — to tag him in a photo she’s posting on social media — before launching an interrogation: Aren’t you a little young to be having sex? Are you one of those guys who sleeps with a girl and doesn’t call her back? And perhaps most worryingly: What are your parents’ names and phone numbers so we can tell them you might have a sexually transmitted infection? If the inappropriate and invasive questions weren’t enough to show this is a fictional scenario, the doctor emerging with a cartoonishly large syringe and cautioning “This will only hurt — a lot!” should give it away. The skit, titled “Clinic Myths,” is performed by youth in a program called SExT — Sex Education by Theatre. Young people dress up as characters such as Captain Condom, Karate Chlamydia and Sneaky Syphilis and roleplay various scenarios that teach and talk about safe sex, including contraception, STI prevention, and communicating and respecting boundaries — before taking it to the stage across the country. While the clinic skit may seem outlandish, it was created based on the real misconceptions and fears youth expressed about visiting a sexual health clinic, said Shira Taylor, a public health researcher and adjunct professor at York University, who created the program. Those fears are believed to be a major driving force in some worrying trends in young people’s sex lives, highlighted in a recent report by advocacy organization LetsStopAids . Regular condom usage is down, rates of certain STIs and HIV have skyrocketed, and knowledge around consent and the importance of testing for STIs is lacking, they found. Emma and Shivam, both 17, are in many ways average teenagers. Emma enjoys playing piano and attending concerts, while Shivam likes to keep busy with sports and computers. They come from different backgrounds: Emma, who is bisexual, grew up in a family that openly discussed sexual health. Shivam, who is heterosexual, was raised in a household where the topic was more taboo; his family, who came to Canada from India, didn’t discuss sexual health and his father was at first uncomfortable with his son attending Pride parades and volunteering with an organization dedicated to raising awareness about AIDS. What unites them is that they’re outliers among their peers, with considerable knowledge around sexual health from their time as peer educators with LetsStopAids. And they’ve both noticed that their friends are lacking knowledge when it comes to healthy sex and relationships. Shivam said there’s a disconnect between what youth are learning in schools versus their actual experiences. Sex-ed in schools often doesn’t feel relevant and isn’t engaging, he said. “There’s these intense diagrams and things that are incomprehensible,” he said. “And I remember a lot of my classmates were just on their phones scrolling through TikTok and Instagram.” As a result, much of what they know is from social media, which is full of misinformation, perpetuates myths and encourages problematic behaviour. https://res.cloudinary.com/letsstopaids/image/upload/v1736786910/LetsStopAIDS%20Website/Media/LetsStopAIDS-Media-News-TorontoStar-Sex-Lives-of-Teenagers-Shivam.jpg Shivam, 17, pictured in his home in Adjala-Tosorontio in Simcoe County. Shivam is a peer educator with LetsStopAids, and works to debunk myths and educate other youth on what safe sex and healthy relationships actually look like. (Michelle Mengsu Chang Toronto St) Emma, who attends a private all-girls school in Toronto, said issues around consent and STI transmission were discussed “extensively” in school. But those conversations aren’t necessarily filtering down to her peers — particularly boys, who she said she mostly interacts with at parties and social functions. She said while movements such as #MeToo have moved the dial on conversations around consent, she feels we’re moving backwards in some ways — pointing to a recent “terrifying” social media trend of boys posting #YourBodyMyChoice since Donald Trump was elected president in November. She said this highlights how teenagers are more likely to be influenced by what they see on social media instead of public health campaigns or sex-ed in schools. “I’m very worried … it feels like teenage boys are once again falling for, like, the trap of ‘We own you,’ ” she said. She said that discussions around STIs are often framed as an “extreme example that could happen to you if you’re not careful.” “Teenagers don’t really expect that any of us would have an STI so we don’t really talk about it … I’ve never heard of anybody my age getting tested,” she said. There’s no definitive answer for why today’s youth are lacking knowledge about safe-sex practices, but experts said there are a myriad of reasons: Peer pressure, stigma, unequal power in relationships and barriers in accessing contraceptives and sexual health treatment are all factors. LetsStopAids surveyed 1,105 Canadians ages 18-24 nationwide and found that seven in 10 have never been tested for HIV or STIs, despite 61 per cent saying they’ve had more than one sexual partner in the last three months. Condom usage is down — 64 per cent of sexually active youth reported inconsistent condom use, with one in five never using condoms. The percentage of surveyed youth who reported using condoms “all the time” fell from 53 per cent in 2020 to 24 per cent in 2024. When it comes to condom negotiation, two in five felt uncomfortable having those conversations, and seven in 10 who experienced unsafe sexual encounters around condom negotiation did not seek help. About half of youth who experienced “stealthing” (non-consensual condom removal during sex) did not seek treatment. All of these factors are believed to be fuelling one of the most stark trends in the report: a substantial rise in STI rates. Between 2011 and 2019, chlamydia rose by 26 per cent in Canada, gonorrhea spiked by 171 per cent and infectious syphilis skyrocketed by 389 per cent, while rates of HIV diagnoses increased by 35 per cent in 2023 from 2022, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. Shamin Mohamed Jr., who started LetsStopAids 20 years ago when he was 15, said sex-ed in schools “tends to rely heavily on fear.” Open conversations around condom use, in particular, are far less common than they used to be, he said. https://res.cloudinary.com/letsstopaids/image/upload/v1736786509/LetsStopAIDS%20Website/Media/LetsStopAIDS-Media-News-TorontoStar-Sex-Lives-of-Teenagers-Shira-Taylor.jpg Shira Taylor is the founder and director of SExT, a program that educates youth about sexual health and healthy relationships through theatre performances and workshops.(Shira Taylor) “If you grew up in the ‘70s or ‘80s, the topic of condoms is well understood … because there were so many mass campaigns that went out,” he said. “But if you look at anyone born from the 2000s, you’ll notice that it’s not a topic that’s actually ever brought up.” Even when equipped with knowledge, youth seeking contraception or STI treatment still face a lot of barriers. Condoms and other forms of contraception can be expensive for youth who are unemployed or working part time, and it takes confidence for them to even go out and buy them, said Mohamed Jr. Emma said it’s almost expected for girls her age to be on birth control, which gives teenage boys an excuse to not use condoms. “It feels like there’s a lot more of a pressure on us to be using birth control when it literally messes up our hormones,” she said. “And there’s so many adverse effects.” According to a 2020 Statistics Canada report that surveyed 15- to 24-year-olds, the main reasons young people said they weren’t using condoms was because they were in a monogamous relationship (47.6 per cent) or because they were using another method of contraception (47.2 per cent), such as the birth control pill or patch. But those methods don’t protect against STIs, and it’s possible for transmission to occur when no symptoms are present. Mohamed Jr. said one of the most distressing findings in their survey was that 34 per cent of youth who were diagnosed with HIV or another STI did not receive treatment, up from 27 per cent in 2022. This shows that even if they’re going out of their way to get tested, they’re still facing obstacles in getting treated, including the cost of medication, but also the stigma around having an STI or HIV, he said. Ibraheem, 17, a participant in the SExT program, said teens aren’t typically having proactive conversations around contraception, which usually comes up “in the heat of the moment.” He said attending SExT’s workshops has taught him how to navigate those conversations and set boundaries. “One of my exes … would often pressure me into doing things. And from this and support of my friends, I learned how to get out of those situations,” he said. Taylor said the numbers are “alarming but not surprising.”  Since 2020, many youth feel like it’s safer to be behind a screen, and they’re having trouble making connections in real life, she said. “With the pandemic pushing young people more online, those kind of negotiation skills and how to have difficult conversations, they’re having those less and less,” Taylor said. Shivam, with LetsStopAids, said he’s noticed that trend among his peers. Increased screen time and fewer in-person interactions during the pandemic created a “false, unrealistic” view of what healthy sexual relationships actually look like, he said.  He said many of his friends are still scared or shy when it comes to talking about sex. He’s been able to help foster those conversations, not only among his friends, but also within his family. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but over time … it was really amazing to see,” he said. “Like, wow, I can have an impact on my own parents.”