Introduction
Sex education plays a significant role in the life of a teenager. It involves counseling, guiding, and educating teenagers on matters related to sex in either school or home settings. Educating teenagers on the sex issue is a common responsibility to teachers, parents, and society as a whole. If undertaken deeply, sex education has direct and lasting influences of supporting teens to make constructive choices in relation to sex since it encourages them to embrace irreproachable moral acts.
Teenagers respond by delaying initiation, protect themselves during initiation, and reduce sex frequency and a number of new partners, as well as increasing the use of condoms and contraceptives for those who are sexually active to avoid sexual abuse. This has lowered the levels of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and unwanted pregnancies.
Analysis
Sex education to teens is certainly crucial for its numerous benefits. For instance, sex education creates awareness of issues related to sex. Through it, teens understand the nature of sex alongside how it affects their lives. Thus, they are able to know themselves and be able to handle or respond to matters touching on their sexual life. Such education plays a significant role in enabling teenagers to make an informed decision regarding themselves, their peers, and possible sex offenders. A teenager can decide whether they can engage in sexual acts or learn how to face situations of any sexual abuse. This will help reduce risk behaviors against teenagers, which include unprotected sex that may lead to unwanted pregnancies or STIs (Lloyd 336).
Teenager’s behavior may be negatively influenced to try out what they do not know; sex education, therefore, comes handy in giving them a choice of responsible behavior. Through it, they are able to understand what responsible sexual behavior is all about, make decisions, and put into practice good morals. Opening up to teenagers on matters related to sex through education, makes them be more open-minded and free to communicate on sexual issues affecting them and avoid any detrimental experiences.
Nevertheless, sex education is fundamental in enabling open discussion on sexual issues among teens, teachers, and parents. Sex education to teenagers in their present developmental stages, growth, and later lives, creates in them an open mind. They are able to understand sex reality, sexual behaviors alongside its consequences. This, in turn, enables them to desist from trial and error on sexual matters, keep off stereotypes related to sex, and in the end avoid being sexually abused.
Early sex education to teenagers helps shape values and behaviors in them. It is noteworthy that young people are vulnerable to attitudes and beliefs. Early sex education, therefore, would help a child embrace and develop strong values on the topic prior to having any sex experience (Lloyd 445). Letting children develop their own beliefs on sex from the onset with the counseling and guidance from teachers and parents helps them make appropriate responses to any sexual situation, especially immoral behaviors copied from their peers. Engaging teenagers in inappropriate sex education will fill the gap they hold regarding sex and sexual behaviors. Teachers and parents are able to instill teenagers’ general knowledge and what is correct or evil about sex.
Sex education equips teenagers with appropriate knowledge, which is passed to them according to their age and situation. Each teenager will be able to get help to a situation facing him/her or have prior knowledge about sex besides learning how to handle sexual behaviors. Through this, there will be reduced risks of teens getting inaccurate information about sex from different sources such as television, movies, peers, and the internet or by experimenting (Lloyd 336). Such alternative sources can have substantial, detrimental effects on how teenagers perceive and handle sexual matters. Sex education should be availed at the right time depending on the child’s development and growth.
Sex education to teenagers also is beneficial to society as a whole, for teenagers are part of that society and will grow to be adults one time. Having a society made up of enlightened individual’s rights from childhood implies that society will face less sex-related vices. This will, in turn, minimize the sex offenses or mistakes committed by various age groups, which would otherwise harm the society since they are already educated on matters of sex and sexual behavior (The Alan Guttmacher Institute).
Conclusion
Lastly, sex education is significantly beneficial to teenagers and society. Facilitators and various stakeholders in society should put more effort into sex education to ensure that they render this service in a timely and effective manner. They should also put into consideration child-to-child case and attend each of them according to his/her independent sexual needs they are facing. It is also clear that, through early sex education, teens’ mind is set to make informed decisions when deemed necessary.
This is more practical in the contemporary society where teens experience a number of sex abuses while others are forced into immoral practices that will ruin their future if not introduced to dangers associated, benefits, and how to avoid tempting situations.
Works Cited
Lloyd Cynthia. Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries, Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005. Print.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). Can more progress be made? Teenage sexual and reproductive behavior in developed countries. New York, NY: AGI, 2001. Print.
