Lessons at school this week on safe sexting, social media use
This week, thousands of secondary school students will receive lessons on how to safely deal with things like sexting and social media. The lessons are part of the Week of Love, annually organized in the run-up to Valentine's Day to help secondary school students figure out love, relationships, and sexuality. A record 350 schools are participating this year, announced Rutgers, the expertise center on sexual health.
This year’s theme focuses on online sexuality. According to the organizers, today’s teenagers are the first group to grow up in a digital world where it is increasingly normal to explore sexuality and form relationships online. Every year, 200,000 teens become sexually active in the Netherlands. They must be able to find reliable information, and their current main sources for that information - the internet and friends - can be anything but that.
“The rapid changes in society call for good education in schools, especially when it comes to online sexuality. It's important that young people not only learn about the biological aspects of sexuality, but that attention is also paid to online sexuality, sexting, and the influence of social media on their self-image," said Evelien Spek, expert in relationship and sex education at Soa Aids Nederland.
The Week of Love is organized by Rutgers, the SOA Aids Nederland foundation, and the municipal health services GGD. According to them, schools find it important to properly educate children about sexuality, but they don’t have structured lesson plans or time for doing so. The Week of Love provides teachers with teaching materials to help with that.
The goal of the week is to “help young people and their teachers in secondary and vocational education with free materials and tools to discuss topics such as online sexuality, relationships, boundaries, and diversity in an accessible way,” Rutgers explained.
Last year, the Week of Love was focused on contraception and the misinformation surrounding it.
