Building young people’s confidence to talk about sex and intimacy

Published on 25 July 2024 | Simon Moore

South Africa has over 20 million young people, and while relationships, sex, sexuality and mental health are topics they want to know about, they are often communicated in inaccurate, antiquated and judgemental ways by moralising, unrelatable authority figures. Young Africa Live aimed to address these issues and help young people make informed choices to improve their sexual and mental health.

Piloted in South Africa from early 2023 until March 2024, the project provided young South Africans with access to accurate and reliable sexual and reproductive health information through judgement-free private conversations on a WhatsApp chatbot, and peer discussions on Facebook and Instagram.

Within a wider project consortium (1), Avert led on content development for the chatbot and social media, as well as social media marketing to drive awareness of the chatbot and engagement with its content. Topics covered included sex, pregnancy and birth control, relationships, HIV, STIs, mental health, accessing services, gender and sexuality, and body issues.

“This chatbot is absolutely amazing, It gets me curious.”

What we learned about content

Sex and pleasure-focused content was the most accessed on the chatbot. Sex-related content was also what grabbed young people’s attention on social media – bold creatives that put sex at the forefront were by far the most popular social content throughout the project. While more serious topics including PrEP, HIV testing, and HIV treatment featured highly in the chatbot’s ‘Ask a question’ feature, this was alongside other popular content on sex and relationships.
Chatbot content that required user engagement, such as quizzes, was particularly popular. Push notifications and serialised content supported long term engagement.
User engagement on social media highlighted topics where further education is needed or issues are misunderstood. For example, user comments on content about consent often proposed that you can tell if someone is consenting to have sex with you by what they wear or by their smile. While in response to a mental health quiz, many user comments said that if you feel stressed or unhappy you should just ignore it or get drunk or high rather than talk to someone.
Social media engagement showed there is still a lot of shame and stigma surrounding sex-related topics. For example, content on masturbation received a lot of negative comments, but these social campaigns also had some of the largest amounts of clicks through to the chatbot – showing young people are interested and want information on these areas.
In terms of content formats, carousels (a series of rotating images) were the content format that worked best with this audience on Facebook – significantly outperforming short videos. It is likely that data costs and connectivity issues in the South African context are a key part in this, with video requiring much more data.

Young Africa Live results


chatbot users in 9 months: 100,000

engagements with social content: 8.9 million

said content is useful for managing their SRH and relationship needs: 88%

What we learned from social media

More broadly, the Young Africa Live experience demonstrated that social media marketing can be a cost-effective way to bring large numbers of users to a chatbot platform, with over 100,000 users engaged within 9 months, at a cost of around $1 per conversation started. (The project benefitted from $100,000 of in-kind ad credit from Meta.)
Facebook and Instagram are also effective tools to reach and engage large numbers of young people in South Africa, with nearly 9 million engagements with social content. In endline surveys, over three quarters of Facebook members strongly agreed that the posts were informative, interesting, and pertinent to their sexual health needs, and over 50% of those surveyed were visiting the Facebook page weekly or monthly.

“I was curious about contraceptives but was scared to ask the people around me. I was worried they might judge me because of my age; hence, I used the App to get the needed information. I have not started engaging in sexual activities but wanted the information for when I am ready to.”

The challenge of censorship

While social media provided opportunities to reach and engage, Young Africa Live also highlighted the obstacles it presents if you are trying to provide sex-positive sexual health information. Social media networks have unclear and inconsistent content policies, and lack understanding of sexual health communications. The project faced increasing censorship of its sex-positive content with rejections of content on a range of topics from condoms, STIs, unhealthy relationships and sexuality and gender, to preventing pregnancy, abuse, and consent – as well as content answering questions around oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms. The decisions were haphazard and inconsistent, with exactly the same content approved and rejected on different occasions. Meta has specific criteria banning sex positive content in many areas, which makes effective sexual health education challenging.

Confidence is key

Overall a key success of Avert’s content work on Young Africa Live was in giving young people the confidence to speak about sex, intimacy, mental health and other issues with their peers and partners – as highlighted by the millions of engagements with content on social media.

This confidence on its own is critical to improving quality of life, resilience, self-efficacy, and wider self-care, whether or not it is linked to specific behaviour change or service uptake. The project’s usage and engagement data demonstrated the value young people place on relevant, engaging sexual and mental health content delivered to them using a sex-positive and youth-friendly approach, without judgement – empowering them to make informed decisions.

Read the evaluation of Young Africa Live here.

(1) The Young Africa Live project consortium was led by Reach Digital Health, with investment from Elton John AIDS Foundation, and integrated within South Africa’s Department of Health-sponsored B-Wise sexual health information brand.

Photo credit: Gulshan Khan/Avert/Ikusasa Lethu. Photos are used for illustrative purposes. They do not imply health status or behaviour.