news - April 1, 2025
Why Aren’t Gen Zs Using Condoms?
By Katie Underwood
Despite our many weird and wonderful advances in the world of sex tech, condoms—the old reliable of the birth control cinematic universe—are still, in 2025, the cheapest effective contraceptive on the market. Yet among Gen Zs , the sheaths seem to have lost their sheen: in the last decade, the World Health Organization has documented an “alarming decline” in condom use by sexually active adolescents around the globe. Add that to the recent resurgence of the Big Three STIs (syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia), an unprecedented uptick in Canadian HIV diagnoses and a wave of politically motivated funding cuts to international AIDS orgs (thanks once again, Trump) and it’s kind of a scary time to be young and doing it. To Shamin Mohamed Jr., however, this generational condom apathy is a new manifestation of a very old problem. More than 20 years ago, when he was just a teen himself, Mohamed founded LetsStopAIDS, Canada’s largest youth HIV charity—now active in 72 countries. Last year, when LetsStopAIDS released the third installment of its national Sex Lives Report, the data spoke for itself: yes, young folks are still having sex. No, many don’t see condoms as necessary anymore. And yes, social media does have something to do with it. Mohamed recently spoke to Maclean’s about how to solve Canada’s youth protection problem. You started LetsStopAIDS when you were just a youngin. What compelled you to tackle HIV and AIDS in particular? I went to a school in the northwest end of Toronto that was full of students who were… I guess you could use the term “at-risk.” A lot of my friends and other people I was close to were getting pregnant or contracting STIs. Some took time off or dropped out of school because of it. Back then, a lot of the onus to know about or find condoms was on young men—we weren’t taught a lot about that. After I learned about HIV, I realized no one wanted to discuss that, either. Eventually, I brought up the idea of starting a sexual-health organization to my principal; I think she thought I was starting a scam. But soon, I was on all the local morning shows and in the city papers talking about it. I wanted to make HIV something that could be chatted about at the dinner table. But today, people still don’t want to. We’re repeating history. How much of your friends’ experiences do you think had to do with a knowledge gap around sexual health? Talking about sex was okay if it was happening in rap songs, but not when it came to real life. There are also certain cultural norms—that sex is dirty, or something you shouldn’t do—that still exist now. As we know, young people are going to have sex regardless, and they’re facing a lot of challenges: embarrassment, yes, but also unsafe conditions. Canada has the worst prevention rate for new HIV infections of any G7 nation; the per capita rates are extremely alarming. Canadians often talk about these problems as if they’re “over there,” in places like Africa or other parts of the world. No, it’s happening to our people and in our communities, too. Birth control is, broadly speaking, more available and acceptable than it’s ever been. Then, last year, the WHO reported a dramatic drop in condom use among sexually active youth. Did that come as a surprise to you? It seems surprising to the general public. But as someone who’s been preaching about sexual health and condom use for as long as I have, it was nice to finally see an international body recognizing a concern we’ve had for a while. What do you think is causing this widespread condom abandonment? There are three main factors behind it, and the first is personal choice. We’ve reached an exciting moment in health care where we have tools like birth control—which has been around forever—but also PrEP, which can prevent you from contracting HIV. DoxyPEP, taken immediately after sex, can lower your chances of getting an STI. So many young people simply don’t view condoms as necessary or important anymore. To them, using condoms is a bit like doing preventative maintenance on a car—it gets put lower and lower on your to-do list until a life-or-death moment. They’re not just a prevention tool, though. They’re a part of sex. What are the other factors? Another is access. There are free-condom programs at clinics, but they’re still not universal. And getting care at a standard walk-in clinic is a nightmare in this country, never mind a sexual-health clinic. Access also isn’t simply about whether condoms are available; it includes the social barriers to getting them. It takes confidence to walk through the aisle at Shoppers Drug Mart and buy them. What if you have to talk to a cashier? If you live in an urban area in Canada, you may know the person working there—or the person doing testing at the local clinic. The final issue is affordability. The cost-of-living crisis strikes again. Condoms are still the most cost-effective tool to prevent STIs and unplanned pregnancies, but for a young person without a steady income, they can be expensive. They may even have to borrow money from a family member who will probably question what they’re doing with it. One of our employees just told me a funny story about how she once called her son and said, “I’m at the store. I know you’re going on a date. What condoms do you want?” He was like, “I’ll get them on my own.” I said, “You know, not every parent would be able to do what you did.” God no. Back to HIV, though: Canada saw a 25 per cent increase in new HIV diagnoses between 2021 and 2022. That’s a massive jump within one year. A lot of time has passed since the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s, but I hardly see any PSAs about HIV/AIDS anymore—and almost zero directed at teens. Could that uptick in diagnoses be related to a general complacency around communicating the risks of unprotected sex? Absolutely. In the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, there were massive ad campaigns around using condoms. That conversation has really dwindled. Well, no one is watching the same channels anymore—if they’re watching “channels” at all. For sure, but young people still need to have information about things like condoms, morning after pills, et cetera. And they’re seeking it out: we recently published a report looking at digital engagement, and it showed that youth are using the internet to get it. Not just social media—I mean search, too. So there’s still value in an old-school mixed approach, and that includes PSA on television. Now, that might mean they’re on Crave and Netflix. How much of the condom conundrum has to do with political factors? One of the most obvious ones I can think of is the conservative pushback on teaching sex and gender in schools. Unfortunately, those topics are increasingly politicized, so they’re being left out of provincial curricula. We need comprehensive sexual health reform in Canada. In South Africa, they start sex education at age four or five—not about full-blown sex, but topics like what kind of touch is and isn’t appropriate and when you can say no. It’s about building confidence. In Canada, our education system hasn’t given students that opportunity. The backlash doesn’t just hurt student’s confidence, either—it makes it more difficult for parents who are already uncomfortable talking about this stuff. Even for students who do receive sex ed, the lessons can be, um, lacking. Back in the early 2000s, I remember my teachers would get out a projector, put up slides of, say, vaginas and point to them. And I was like, “Okay, how is this going to protect me?” It was an anatomy class. Now, young people want to learn about consent, abstinence, sexual rights, women’s health and gender identity. You don’t just magically learn these things the minute you turn 16. And current sex ed isn’t giving young people information they find relevant. It’s not engaging. It still relies on fear—of getting pregnant, of getting infected. Scare tactics have been around forever. Remember that Mean Girls bit? The gym teacher, Coach Carr, says “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die!” A classic. Yes, but there are different scary things out there now. If kids aren’t learning about condoms in class, for example, they resort to what they can find—on the internet—and it may not be fact-based. The real elephants in the room are porn and pop culture that portrays sex that’s unrealistic and sometimes violent. You rarely see condoms being used there. A main method of sex ed is social media. That’s especially worrying in 2025, when many of the barriers that used to filter real from fake have disappeared. A lot of youth also don’t know their sexual rights. In one of our recent studies, 14 per cent said they felt unsafe during a sexual interaction. Some were with a person who removed a condom without their consent. That’s called “stealthing,” and it’s a crime here in Canada. The really troubling part is that half of the teens who experienced it didn’t seek help or talk to anyone. And after Trump was elected in November, the “Your body, my choice” movement started to gain popularity among young boys and men online—in parts of Canada, everywhere. It’s a terrifying trend. So how do you permeate that mess of misinformation? First, we need to understand the reasoning of youth who aren’t using condoms. Our study found that one in five have never used a condom during sex. When we asked why not, they gave answers like, “I’m already having orgasms and condoms would make that impossible.” “They make things dry.” And: “They’re bad vibes.” Then we get to work on debunking those things. It’s not just about shoving condoms into their hands; we have to empower them to say, “I want to have sex with you, but we have to use a condom.” We live in a time where there’s a relative ease of access to quick sex, with the rise of apps like Grindr and Bumble and Hinge. If, eventually, young people use these apps and finally meet someone in-person after a lengthy online conversation, will they feel confident enough to make that boundary known? I think we agree that a Boomer gym teacher with a banana isn’t the ideal messenger. What about influencers? Can we spread the word about safe sex that way? Sell condoms via brand deals with TikTokers? Making these discussions not-boring is definitely going to take some innovation. We just went through COVID, which spawned a generation of kids who feel more comfortable at home—who maybe didn’t grow up going out for dinners or on dates. Maybe they missed their formals or experienced their first crush virtually. All of that means more sexual decisions are going to happen behind closed doors. That means we’ll need to create more content so they can, for example, share a video about prevention medications or HIV myths to correct their friends. And those moments need to happen a million times. They don’t necessarily need to come via influencers—young people can spot an ad. It just needs to be sincere and delivered by someone they can relate to. Are those messages really still meaningful—do they carry the same weight, I mean—if they’re delivered quickly and digitally? Sexual-health discussions should still happen through community events, through parties, et cetera. (LetsStopAIDS has hosted events at Pride, for example.) But most of our relationships and discussions are actually digital—so, yes. We spend a lot of time trying to teach students safer methods to protect their identities and personal information, like making sure they send disappearing messages or thinking twice about who they send images or conversations to. We also remind them there are still real-life consequences. What are some of the other more creative non-school, non-scary, not-lame sex-ed attempts you’ve seen (or tried) lately? AI has a lot of potential to do good—I’m very confident that young people are asking ChatGPT about sex—but organizations like ours will need to have some input at those tables to make sure there are some basic guardrails, like fact-checking. A non-AI example? LetsStopAIDS runs gamified workshops called Peer to Peer, mostly in Ontario and Saskatchewan. It’s an Amazing Race type of thing, with fun challenges: they’ve got role-playing, trivia, puzzle-making and no lecturing. It’s all led by youth. In 2024, we met with 1,800 students. At the start of the workshops, less than a third of students understood what HIV was and how to prevent it. After them, that number jumped to 72 per cent—and they retained that information. I’m not saying this is a cure-all: we still face backlash all the time from parents, and even principals, who want us to remove the condom portion, because of the association with pregnancy. But we’re able to make a significant impact in one day. One of the most shocking parts of it was actually the teachers’ reactions. Some took photos of the materials and said, “You know what? I didn’t even know this stuff!” Having said this, is there reason to hope that condoms will make a comeback? We’re not on a path to the condom issue being fully cleared. After we released our latest report last year, we went to Ottawa to present it to several MPs and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Even getting a meeting was difficult because of the taboo around STIs and HIV—nobody wants to be too public of an advocate. We’re also seeing less funding going toward sexual-health initiatives and fighting HIV and AIDS internationally—and this started well before Trump froze funding to PEPFAR. We’re never going to solve those epidemics without health service organizations, NGOs, schools, governments—everyone—seeing them as a priority. This summer marks the first time Canada will host the C7, a gathering of civic organizations during the G7 in Ottawa. I’ll be there saying, We need to take what’s happening with youth more seriously . It’s a small world, and people need to be reminded that we’re all connected. When you take care of yourself, whether that means getting condoms or getting tested, you’re also taking care of others. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
