When it comes to sex education, many teens think they know everything. The trouble is, what they don’t know is threatening their lives.


Many teens, in an attempt to adhere to the abstinence-only messages they are taught in school, engage in only oral and anal sex to preserve their virginity.

That puts teens at high risk for HIV/AIDS and leaves them vulnerable to other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

According to the film Let’s Talk About Sex, every day in the United States, 10,000 teenagers contract STIs, 2,400 young girls get pregnant and 55 young people become HIV positive.

Those statistics inspired Australian film director James Houston to make his feature length documentary designed to set the facts of life straight.

Houston’s film profiles six young adults in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, DC, and Arizona plus other teens around the globe. Through their personal stories, viewers get insight into today’s (alternately) pregnant, celibate, promiscuous and HIV-positive youth.

The film shows that a lack of proper sex ed can result in life-threatening misperceptions but that teens, when armed with the truth, can also act responsibly.

Houston’s film is a critical window into the need for more widespread, comprehensive sex ed—and a good vehicle for teaching it.