You’ve likely stumbled across the hilariously educational TikTok content by SexEd for Guys, run by a group of students at the College. With video content like “POV: they asked for consent” and “POV: you don’t give into social pressure,” the guys tackle complex topics with indefectible comedy and ease.
The channel began around 2 years ago with an Independent Study project sponsored by Adam Howard, who works with a lot of basketball players. David Stewart `25, who currently runs the channel, explained how this project began in an interview with The Colby Echo.
“[Howard] is writing a book called Privileged Brotherhoods about the toxicity of all-boys schools, and one of the things he found was that all-boys schools as a whole don’t have a great sexual education or program. So he was like ‘you guys just start this TikTok page and try to grow a following about how to educate people about sex ed stuff,’” said Stewart.
Despite the channel starting within the last couple of years, the account currently boasts a following of 55.8K viewers. For Stewart, this number came as a surprise.
“I certainly did not expect it. When he first pitched the idea I was like there is just no way this is ever going to work because on TikTok I feel like the last thing you want to see is educational stuff,” said Stewart. “Then we had to kind of find a way to adjust to making the videos funny and entertaining without losing the educational piece.”
The large following didn’t really start until around the sixth video, but that video got around 100,000 views “and from then it kind of snowballed,” according to Stewart.
Around that time, the channel had around ten videos with about 500,000 views, all containing rich educational content.
“I was definitely super excited. The more followers we got, the bigger our audience obviously, and the more our message spreads. Adam was obviously super stoked because we were trying to promote his book too,” Stewart shared.
Howard also sponsors a bunch of other media projects led by student researchers which you can view on his site: privilegedbrotherhoods.org. The site hosts everything from information about his own research and publications to personal stories shared by alums of elite all-boy schools about their experiences.
The TikTok channel, in particular, gears itself towards shedding light on SexEd which a lot of people lack quality background in. With the videos popping up on follower’s feeds every now and then, the topics discussed become far more accessible, reaching a broad range of people.
Especially as younger boys navigate sexuality and really only have each other to guide how they approach specific situations, educational videos from college kids that they can look up to can make all the difference. The laidback, fun delivery of the topics in the videos can help youth take sexual education more seriously because they are much more likely to respect younger adults normalizing healthy conversations about sex. The videos put the “don’t have sex, you will get pregnant” classroom mentality to shame.
Though some might consider this educational approach controversial in some respects, Sex Ed for Guys welcomes any and all backlash as a way of sparking conversations about sex.
“Adam definitely likes to say that he would rather the comments be more active than the views because he likes to stir up just a conversation most of the time about whatever our topic tends to be,” said Stewart.
The group also selects their topics carefully, ensuring that the videos include focused points that viewers can benefit from learning about.
“So for JanPlan last year, there were two guys who were also on the team that like made an entire curriculum of stuff that we really wanted to touch on eventually. I mean like it’s a super big document. So we’ll pretty much just go on there, we’ll talk to Adam, meet on Mondays and we’ll kind of go through the whole week like what do we want to touch on,” said Stewart, revealing part of their content-making process.
Once they’ve hammered down the topic, whoever is around from the group will brainstorm together how to deliver the topic in a funny way, then film. This relaxed approach creates a light space for viewers to engage with the content as they learn more about sex.
The group releases a new video every Sunday and Wednesday, so be on the lookout for their content and give them a follow @sexedforguys! Their videos are guaranteed to make you laugh, and it never hurts to learn something along the way.
~ Jenna Boling `24
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