On April 29, 2026, the consent and sexual-violence-prevention nonprofit It's On Us released "The Preparation Problem," a survey of approximately 1,000 college-enrolled men ages 18–25 finding that fewer than one in three learned about sex through formal classroom education before arriving on campus. More than half identified media — pornography, social media, film and TV — as their primary source of sexual education. 58% reported receiving no formal consent or sexual-communication education before college.

Why It Matters

For sexual education technology platforms — OMGYes, Coral, Lover, Blueheart, Lasting — the It's On Us data is the strongest recent quantification of a gap their products are explicitly designed to fill. With formal K–12 sex ed retreating in many states and the federal government actively dismantling its support infrastructure, private and digital education platforms are increasingly the only scaled alternative. The data also reinforces the case sex educators have been making to legislators considering age-verification bills: pushing teens off porn platforms without a corresponding investment in actual education leaves them with the same media-shaped mental models, just less accessible information.

The survey breaks down sources by demographic in ways that map closely onto the ongoing federal sex-education funding fight. Black respondents were more likely to have received community-based education from family or trusted adults; queer men were more likely to report online sources as their primary teachers. Less than half of school-based curricula and less than one-third of community-based education covered "healthy conflict and relationship communication" — the specific competencies the report's authors flag as protective against sexual violence on college campuses. The most striking correlation: men who reported being taught "hierarchical family values" showed significantly higher hostility toward women on standard attitudinal measures.

It's On Us framed the report around an explicit call to expand and modernize school-based sex education with a focus on relational and communication skills, not just reproductive biology. The release lands during an active federal pullback — the Trump administration's FY2026 budget zeroed out the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), and the August 2025 directive requiring states to remove gender-identity references from PREP and Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) materials was blocked by a federal judge after 16 states and DC sued.

Sources

Update — 2026-04-30

Initial entry — story first created.