Scarleteen is owned and operated by Heather Corinna and a handful of international volunteers, some who are young adults themselves, and currently serves from 20,000 - 30,000 teens and young adults, as well as parents and educators, every day of the year. While some adults also use Scarleteen to glean sexuality information for themselves, Scarleteen is compiled and written for a young adult population, primarily based in the information that population directly asks us for, and much of our information is more appropriate for teens and young adults than for older adults.
Scarleteen began in 1998 when other young adult sex education sites were not yet around. It wasn't exactly planned: rather, via a different website, emails started coming in from young adults with sex questions they couldn't find answer to online, making clear there was a need for a website like this. We didn't have a mold or a precedent for anything like Scarleteen, so we built the site -- and maintain it still -- based on what our users were and are asking for, some sound educational theory, and have taken the sort of approach our users have expressed being most comfortable with over time.
Scarleteen and its content has been lauded by such organizations as SIECUS, UNICEF, Planned Parenthood, The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, Family Health International, the International Association for Adolescent Health, The Boston Women's Health Collective and more. Scarleteen is usually the highest ranking sex ed site online, despite the fact that we don't have a big organization behind us or any public funding, nor have we ever run any advertising anywhere. Scarleteen is not somewhere a user will get to by being misled or misdirected: it's 100% opt-in education most users find through search engines, partners, friends, teachers, other sexual health or teen organizations, parents or mentors. Scarleteen is as popular and well-known as it is primarily because of word of mouth amongst young adults, advocates and educators, and we think that says quite a bit.
We offer Scarleteen as a better and more inclusive resource for sex information for teens than adult sexuality sites, as well as a supplement to in-home and school-based sex education. Many parents, guardians and educators have used it as a tool to initiate discussion with their teens on some of the topics addressed. Some homeschooling parents have used Scarleteen as curricula for sex education; colleges add our articles to their sexuality syllabi often. We encourage you to do the same: we think the best sex education anyone can have is not only comprehensive and accurate, but is a diverse, well-rounded education that comes from more than but one source or perspective. Ideally, we'd love to see Scarleteen as a part -- not a sum -- of a diverse sexuality education that comes from other places as well, such as through school sex education and discussions with parents or guardians.
Few young adults nor parents can rely on school alone, or at all, for comprehensive, accurate sex education. There is also every evidence that much in-school sex education is not working, particularly since the advent of abstinence-only "education."
According to SIECUS, "To date, six studies of abstinence-only programs have been published. None of these studies found consistent and significant program effects on delaying the onset of intercourse, and at least one study provided strong evidence that the program did not delay the onset of intercourse. Thus, the weight of evidence indicates that these abstinence-only programs do not delay the onset of intercourse. A study of 7,326 seventh and eighth graders in California who participated in an abstinence-only program found that the program did not have a measurable impact upon either sexual or contraceptive behaviors. Nearly two-thirds of teenagers think teaching "Just Say No" is an ineffective deterrent to teenage sexual activity." A recent, congressionally-approved study of students using both abstinence-based and comprehensive sex education showed that students in the abstinence-only programs were no more likely to delay sexual intercourse and had similar numbers of sex partners at the same ages. That's a pretty big waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for abstinence-programs and a federal ban (per funding) on comprehensive sex ed, and that's without even addressing the inaccurate and negative messages abstinence-only education gives young people about sexually transmitted infections and contraception, relationships, sexual orientation and identity, gender and pleasure.
While we at Scarleteen do not hold to the notion that just telling young adults to just go have sex is a better solution (or any solution at all, since that wouldn't answer anyone's questions), we strongly feel that belying judgment and furnishing them with the facts and context they need to know REGARDLESS of whether or not they are sexually active readies them to learn to make their own choices, and that often unheard perspectives help develop their own systems of ethics and values when combined with the perspectives of peers, schools, parents, other mentors and their overall culture and communities.
One cannot make a decision from a position of informed consent without actually being informed. We also feel that it's important youth have as many sources of sound sex education as possible. Even when sex ed in schools is sound, the school social environment in and of itself poses some problems for teens and young adults because their privacy is so limited. We feel what we do at Scarleteen is not only valuable when young adults have no sex ed otherwise, or inaccurate sex education, but also is a helpful and needed supplement to quality school or home sex education.
More than half of American teens DO already abstain from intercourse until age 17 (and have since before abstinence-only initiatives), and that a quarter of them at 20 still have not had heterosexual intercourse. These same studies show that informative sex education has not increased sexual activity, pregnancy or the number of sexual partners, and has in fact, wildly succeeded in that, "Teenagers who start having intercourse following a sexuality education program are more likely to use contraception than those who have not participated in a program. (SIECUS)." In addition, while many teens may not be having vaginal intercourse, they are often instead engaging in a myriad of other sexual practices, including petting, oral sex and even anal sex, and a recent study of those who have taken abstinence pledges has shown that those pledgers have identical rates of STIs as well as sexual activity, to those who have not pledged to abstain.
At Scarleteen, we discuss sexuality and sexual partnership from a vantage-point of sexual activity being optional, not required, and as something which is always best when anyone involved feels it is wanted and which they are well-prepared for emotionally, intellectually, interpersonally and in terms of their health. We want all of our users to have the information they need no matter what choices they make, and whether they use that information now or later. One reason young adult sex education is so important is that the teens and twenties are a time period in which people are often very interested in (and thus best retain) sex and sexuality information, and because this is information which is needed by most people at some point in life: we don't only educate for those having sex now, but for a lifetime of sexuality.
We feel accurate, holistic and interactive education, made as age-pertinent and appropriate as possible, allows anyone, regardless of age, to make the best choices throughout their lives.
This, coupled with open care and communication from parents, other educators, teachers and other respected adults, and a confidence in individual choices and relationships is the foundation for lifelong sexual and emotional health. Sound knowledge and understanding of sexuality not only equips a teen with what is needed to make informed choices, but an understanding of sexual anatomy, boundaries, and what they may and may not want to participate in benefits them whether they choose to be sexually active or not. Our recent cultural rise of rape reporting and sexual abuse may, in fact, have less to do with the rise of these crimes itself than with the knowledge to know when they have been committed. Sexuality information and education are as important to personal safety as learning how to look both ways when crossing the street is. Sexuality is a facet of human life no matter how we do or do not use it, and is as much as facet as eating, breathing, speaking and thinking. To eschew its existence is to deprive those who need the information of a large aspect of self.
You can reach Heather Corinna directly about anything pertaining to the site by email here. If you'd like your email forwarded to a specific volunteer or author, you can use the contact form for that person when listed via their profile at the site, or simply request we forward your mail to that individual accordingly.
If you want to send us mail by post (which we ask you limit in the interest of natural resource conservation), you can do so by sending to:
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