The Current - Many teens aren’t using condoms, research shows

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Research shows teens in Canada are becoming less likely to use a condom. We look at how educators are taking a different approach to talking about sexual health — and what’s at stake.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Let's get started. It's four o'clock. So welcome everyone to our P2P workshop, which is peer-to-peer. On a Thursday afternoon in downtown Toronto, a group of young people, most of them in their twenties, have come together for a workshop. The participants don't really know what to expect, but they do know they'll be talking about sex.

It's okay to laugh, you know, like we might say penis, vagina, other words. It's okay to laugh as long as you are not laughing at each other. No bad questions. So chances are, if you are thinking about it, someone else is too. So please don't hesitate to ask. Amruta and Ahmed are the facilitators trying to put everyone at ease. This session is put on by Let's Stop AIDS. It's a charity whose mission is to expand knowledge about HIV,

AIDS and sexual awareness. And their message is especially timely now, and especially for young people. A report from the World Health Organization reveals that teens in several countries, including Canada, are becoming less likely to use a condom. Among sexually active 15-year-olds, 60% said they used a condom the last time they'd had sex. 15-year-olds, 60% said they used a condom the last time they'd had sex. Unfortunately, what we are seeing since 2014, that this number is constantly decreasing in both boys and girls. During the last decade, it decreased around 10%, which is quite alarming news. Andres Couto is the lead author of that WHO report. He believes this alarming news calls for improved access to sexual education. I would like to see that the governments, all governments across the world,

are providing sufficient funds for sexuality and relationships education. And it is done in a comprehensive and holistic way. What I mean under that is it's not that we are just giving a banana to the children and they have to learn how to put a condom on it. It's very important, though, but more that we are teaching children how to communicate their needs, how to communicate their boundaries, how to tell what they want and on what they don't want. Let us empower them to have more responsibility in making informed decisions around their sexual activity. Back at the Let's Stop AIDS workshop in Toronto, participants are getting an education they might have missed out on in high school, first with some straightforward show and tell. Has anyone ever seen internal condoms, also called as female condoms? Anyone? You've seen it? So,

this portion goes inside the vulva, and then this portion stays out. It's pretty expensive, and it's hard to find as well. Each packet costs $25 for one. And then, through play with a not-so-old-fashioned game of Jeopardy. Sexual health, 100. Some people are allergic to this material. What is latex? Yep, that's correct.

Relationship and mental wellness. This C word also means permission and can be taken back at any time. What is consent? Yep, that's correct. And remember, no means no. Alright. HIV misconceptions. How many points?

400. 400. Okay, love that. Reaching this status means HIV positive individual cannot pass on the virus to other people. U equals U? Yes. Undetectable equals untransmittable. Good job.

Amazing. Shaman Muhammad Jr. is the founder and president of Let's Stop AIDS. Transmenopause. Good job! Amazing! Shaman Mohammed Jr. is the founder and president of Let's Stop AIDS. It's the group that puts on workshops like that. Shaman, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for being here. As I said, that's very different than I think the sex, I mean, I'm old, but the sex that I got in school was not Jeopardy, for example. Is that

kind of the point? Yeah, exactly. There's something super creative when it's heavily gamified that allows you to feel open and have meaningful conversation. And especially when you think about it from the perspective of a 15-year-old who may or may not have sex for the first time, they have to first make some life decisions, right? Like they first have to feel confident enough to walk into a drugstore and potentially buy condoms. Then there's the question of money. Condoms aren't cheap, especially when you're 15. So where's that money come from? Are you asking your parents? Are you uncomfortable with that conversation? And on top of all that, they need to understand why

protection is so important. But is your sense that the people, the young people who are participating in this, that this is something that they're looking for? This is something that they're hungry for? Yeah, I think that young people are coming there because there's a lack of reliable information online. And there's, we're still human. So there's something special about coming in person with peers, where you can relate and have discussions together. We heard a little bit of those workshops. This is one of the participants in the workshop named Excellent. Have a listen. I didn't grow up being talked to about sex. I had to find out from friends. From where I come from, sex wasn't talked about in high school. They only taught about abstaining.

like I come from, sex wasn't talked about in high school. They only taught about abstaining. They didn't talk about condoms or nothing. They put fear behind it. So like people would abstain and you know, high schoolers, you tell them to not to do something, they will definitely do it. So I think like being like not so aware about like sex and everything really like closed my mind to a lot of things that I should have known or know by my age. How concerned are you about that idea that the conversations are rooted around fear? When we create a culture of fear, it doesn't allow us to be open. And when it doesn't allow us to be open, it ruins our confidence. And when you're in a moment where consent is required, it ends up actually causing more fear.

This year alone, Let's Stop AIDS has done 95 workshops. That's 1,800 young people that have come to our workshops. And these are participants across Ontario and Saskatchewan. And we asked them a simple question around their knowledge of HIV and how to prevent it. Only 31% of students understood about HIV. Now, by the end of that workshop, that number went up to 72%. Really, until young people have reliable, complete, and up-to-date information, it places them in a very complicated situation. Young people are going to have sex. I mean, you can tell them not to, you can have the abstinence line, but chances are that's going to happen at some point in time. Are

you concerned or surprised, given that data shows that what condom use among sexually active 15-year olds is going down? Yeah. So with or without sexual education, young people are going to have sex. It's why Let's Stop AIDS has been advocating for a comprehensive reform on sexual education in our country until we have reliable complete information. This right now our sexual health information really is very heterosexual focused talking about just pregnancies and STIs but doesn't cover very key topics like consent, and STIs, but doesn't cover very key topics like consent, sexual rights, women's health, gender identity.

Is that in part why you think that, I mean, the lack of education is why sexually active 15-year-olds would not be using a condom? A lot of it has to come down to access. If condoms are expensive in terms of cost, there's a lot of priorities of choosing, do you want to save up for that new shoes or do you want to buy condoms that you may not use? Or do you want to go into a store and perhaps be embarrassed because you're going down that aisle in the drugstore? And also the intimidation of understanding that aisle. It all comes down to as well, your own personal knowledge of understanding why do I need to take this step to understand why using protection is a key role of preventing unwanted pregnancies,

STIs, or even HIV. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Jake is 31.

He attended one of your workshops. Have a listen to this. I look at myself, a gay man. Growing up in that community, you hear about how much you need to protect yourself. But I feel like a lot of people, maybe they don't hear that anymore because there are, you know, treatments for HIV and there are preventative measures for HIV. So I feel like a lot of people, you know, the message is kind of lost these days. And it's not something that people take as seriously as they should. You know, the younger generation definitely didn't grow up in a time when AIDS was feared. They didn't go through the scary times

that, you know, we did. What do you make of that theory? There's a complacency that people will see in part because it's 2024. It's not the 80s when HIV and AIDS was seen as a death sentence. We need to bring back that sense of urgency because we have a silent growing issue in our country of STIs rising. Canada has the highest rate of new HIV transmissions of any G7 nation and young people will look for answers and when they don't find answers, they're going to encounter misinformation, misconceptions, even fake news. We're in a time that, especially being in a digital world, where it's a whole different world when you're meeting someone in person versus messaging them on Snapchat or on Instagram. When young people are in a situation where it's not behind a phone, it's not behind a screen, it's in person, it's a whole different level of what it was in the 80s,

where it was meet me at a bus stop, or I'll give you a call when I can. The level of communication that we have now has not kept up with young people. I founded Let's Stop AIDS when I was 15. with young people. I founded Let's Stop AIDS when I was 15. And it's 20 years this year for this organization. And the reason I started it was because there was no one speaking about HIV and STIs the way how I felt was needed and required. But my school had a lot of people that were dropping out due to unplanned pregnancies. Due to STIs, they were away from schools for certain days with unsaid rules. And were people talking about that at all? It was let's not talk about it type of topic. Unless a student dropped out. Back then,

my school had the lowest literacy test results of Toronto. That really drove a lot of attention. I brought the idea to my principal and she said, are you trying to start a scam or something? That got media attention. And it was actually stations like CBC that gave me airtime to gain awareness that if we don't have support, a coordinated approach from multiple levels, our teachers, our politicians, our governments, our peers, how will we make and create an accepting society that if the person near you doesn't have the same sexuality preferences, doesn't have the same understanding of gender, and then finally doesn't have the same understanding of how to have safer sexual practices, like using condoms, using contraceptions, learning about PrEP, which is a

pill you can take each day that prevents HIV, or tools like PEP, where if you were to take PEP after a risky or sexual encounter, it could actually prevent you from becoming HIV positive. We are in Canada. We have access to these tools and the lack of education about these tools that are available to all Canadians is alarming. One of the reasons why perhaps this is not discussed is because talking about sex is really awkward. I mean, if you're a parent, you will go out of your way often to not have that conversation with your kid. In school, it's the class that people laugh about sometimes, not always, and teachers can be embarrassed and awkward. Are you surprised that it's still a taboo subject to some people?

I am surprised, but not. I would imagine that any parent goes through a moment of watching their child grow up and seeing them enter this phase that is always feared as the scary phase. This is why it has to be a mixture of governments, families, civil societies, even religious groups that understand that if we all come together in a way of talking about this information and these prophylactic tools, we'll really be able to be there

and allow informed decisions for youth. And yet in the face of that, there are many parents who are very worried about the idea that their kids would be learning about sex or sexual identity, sexual orientation at school. There are governments that are looking at imposing new restrictions around sexual education and requiring parents to opt in to this rather than it just being part of the curriculum that parents would have to opt and children would have to opt out of. What do you say to that? That parents want to have

more say in this. There are some parents who say that this is something that should be taught at home. I understand, but youth are still in situations where there is peer pressure, where there is discussions about consent. We're in a digital world where a lot of these topics are amplified by the music we hear, the clothing we wear, the society of what's around us. Kids also have access to pornography, free pornography online, which we've talked about this before in terms of what it does to sexual behavior and how kids think about sexual behavior, how kids think about consent. They don't make condoms as glamorous as it would,

where there was a period in the 80s where there was a big push in the pornography industry to have porn actors use condoms to encourage that movement. A lot of that throughout the industry has been pushed away. And truly, I think that this is a mixture of issues. We have these tools that are not available easily, like condoms. They're not free. Organizations like Let's Stop AIDS make them free. But there's also a stigma to find an organization, find the time to go to an organization and know where it is, especially if you're in a rural part of Canada. Also in our country, I think self-testing kits to test yourself for HIV and other things need to be readily available. What do we need to do, just finally, to make sure that those conversations around sex, those healthier conversations around sex happen with young people?

We need to create a space where your kids, your peers, your older, younger siblings could feel comfortable to tell you about their identity, which learning about their identity and their sexual journey will allow them to feel confident that if they are in a riskier situation, that they have the tools and methods to make life decisions. They'll be able to speak up more and understand what they need versus being peer pressured into situations. An advice and note for parents is that this WHO report was really clearly showing with or without knowledge young people will go through a sexual journey in their life. It's so valuable to support your child throughout this experience because at the end of the day it's something that they will have to explore at some point. And providing this knowledge doesn't mean that they're going to go out right away and start being sexually active. And this survey showed that pretty clearly that there's

actually young boys are having less sex actually. So I think it's actually something that we're empowering young people. So when they are in a situation, let's say something happens. It may be rape. It may be a peer pressure situation. They'll feel confident to tell you. And if we don't, I mean, again, we started in talking about the decline in condom use among sexually active teens in this country. And it's not just Canada, but elsewhere as well.

What are you most concerned about? I'm most concerned about that our numbers will keep rising. Numbers of? Of HIV and STIs will rise, that we'll have a lot more young people that are not treated. Do we want a culture where young people feel too fearful to take the steps to be healthy? Do we want a country that we have access to some of the, you know, in a world perspective, some of the best healthcare available to young people, and for them to not utilize it? I would hope that we want the best for our young Canadians. Shaman, thank you very much. Thank you. Shaman Muhammad Jr. is the founder and president of Let's Stop AIDS.