A Digital Program to Promote Sexual Communication Between Early Adolescents and Parents: Development and Acceptability Testing Results

Family communication about puberty, relationships, and sexuality is an important component of healthy sexual development for early adolescents who are beginning puberty and navigating increased interest in sexual and romantic relationships. Yet sexual communication is difficult for many families. Many sex education books and in-person programs exist, but they are an increasingly outdated form of education in our digital world. To address this gap, our team developed a new digital program called Let’s Talk to offer early sex education and support sexual communication between parents and adolescents aged 10–13 years. In this paper, we preview the design and functionality of Let’s Talk and describe the development of this program. Additionally, we report results from a preliminary investigation of the program’s perceived acceptability and usefulness from user testing with 35 parent-adolescent dyads recruited from across the US. Overall, both parents and adolescents who tested Let’s Talk expressed high levels of enthusiasm for the program. For example, over 80% of users liked both the program content and structure, and believed Let’s Talk would be helpful to other families. They also suggested important improvements that can increase the ultimate impact, engagement, and commercial readiness of Let’s Talk.

Duke Scholars

Author Arnav Jhala Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs