Top 13 Sources of Sex Ed for Adults

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What is your go-to resource for sexual health information?

A survey of more than 2,000 adults in the United States reveals a range of different primary sex education sources, including doctors, pornography, and TikTok.

Sexual wellness brand Lovehoney carried out the research in August 2022.

The pie chart above shares the top six primary sources of sex ed for adults in the United States, while the table below lists the top 13.

Primary sex ed source	Percentage of US adults
1. A doctor	36%
2. Friends	30%
3. Google	27%
4. Sexual health websites	26%
5. Medical websites	25%
6. Pornography	17%
7. Family	17%
8. Clinics	13%
9. Nurses	13%
10. School	12%
11. News Articles	12%
12. Planned Parenthood	11%
13. TikTok	8%

Adult entertainment as sex ed

While it is heartening to see most people list their doctor as their primary source of sexual health information, 17% of adults said pornography is their main resource of sex ed information.

Pornography is made for entertainment, not education, and is, in general, a performance of sex. Relying on adult entertainment to inform sexual health is like relying on romantic comedies for dating tips. At best, it’s inadequate. At worst, it can put your health and safety in danger if potential negative outcomes are overlooked in search of a happy ending.

Certified Sex Educator Javay Frye-Nekrasova shares this concern and pointed out geographic standouts from the survey data.

“A range of cities across the US—including Memphis, Philadelphia, and Columbus—rely heavily on porn for their sex education, which is less than ideal given porn’s unrealistic (and potentially problematic) portrayal of sex.

Gender differences

Responses among men and women were similar, with most of them being within a 5% difference range. The divide was greatest when sharing if they received sex education help from pornography, friends, family, and medical websites.

Regarding pornography, 22% of men and 13% of women said it was their primary source of sexual health information in the Lovehoney survey.

Studies mentioned in our previous article on sex education for men show that early exposure to pornography is common for adolescents and that boys are more likely to be exposed to it at a younger age.

Nationally representative data from 2015 that was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2021 found that 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States cited pornography as their most useful resource on how to have sex.

Related Read: 11 Adult Sex Ed Resources for When the Classroom Didn’t Cut It

Women relied more on friends and family for sex education

Notably, nearly a third of women (31%) cited friends as a source of sexual health information in the Lovehoney survey. On the other hand, less than a quarter of men (23%) said they relied on friends for knowledge in this area.

As for family, just over a fifth of women (21%) and a tenth of men (11%) said they consulted them.

The web as sex ed teacher

Although men and women equally cited sexual health websites as sources, their responses differed by 9% for medical websites, in particular. In total, 21% of men used them whereas 28% of women did.

Sex ed and social media

A more detailed breakdown on Lovehoney’s blog shows TikTok slimly beat out health helplines as a sexual health resource. However, women were slightly more likely to name TikTok as their top sex ed source at 9%. Just 8% of male respondents said the same.

On the other hand, men were more likely (10%) to call health helplines, with just 6% citing them as a primary source of sexual health information.