Why are Facebook and other social media platforms censoring important health information as if it were pornography?

The United States has staggeringly high rates of STDs, unplanned pregnancies, and sexual assaults—some of the highest in fact, of any industrialized country.  By nearly every measure, we are in a sexual health crisis.

The only proven way to combat this crisis is to make sex education information widely available. When people have access to information to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, they use it, and these rates go down. In a recent study, an astounding 89% of teens and young adults said the Internet is their primary source for this kind of sexual health information -- but major internet companies are censoring this information and blocking it from their platforms.

That’s why I started this petition asking the online platforms Americans use most -- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Yahoo, and Google-- to stop censoring sex education content from health organizations trying to provide people with the information they want and need to be healthy.

Respected sexual health organizations place ads on social media platforms like Facebook to direct people to the sexual health information. Yet many of these organizations say their ads are being deleted and rejected under policies that prohibit pornography.

There’s a big difference between an ad that encourages people to get tested for sexually transmitted infections and one that links to the latest celebrity sex tape -- but Facebook and the others treat them as if they were exactly the same.

Social media platforms are increasingly where people go to get their news; it only makes sense that they should be able to get the information they need to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in the same place. When organizations are blocked from using technology to get this lifesaving knowledge to the people who need it, everyone loses.

It’s time for the tech giants to do their part in helping to end our nation’s sexual health crisis. Please join me in asking Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Yahoo, and Google to change the restrictive policies that prevent the promotion of effective sexual health messages.