For You: An Exploration of Digital and Sexual Health Literacy Through TikTok Among Young Women in Belgium

Details

Supervisors

Willemsen, Jochem ; Jeitani, Celine ; Flores, Sam

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

enTikTok has gained substantial reach, circulating sexuality-related content through algorithmic recommendation rather than traditional institutions. This raises the question of how young women access, understand, appraise, and apply the content they meet. This study adopts the Sexual Health Literacy framework and a feminist epistemological lens to examine young women’s navigation of this content. Forty-four women, aged 18 to 30, and living in Belgium, completed an anonymous open-ended online questionnaire in French, English, or Dutch. The data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, as well as Harding’s strong objectivity (1991, 1993). Three themes were constructed. The first captures young women’s sources of knowledge, highlighting the way participants learned from TikTok while disavowing it as a source. The second involves the standards of credibility applied, and how young women appraised content across biomedical, experiential, and affective-performative registers, disengaging when these failed to resolve contradiction. The third is understood in terms of sexuality framing, meaning the way young women encountered their own sexuality framed as a problem to manage and as content organised around men, which they named and contested. The study indicates that to simply relocate sexual health literacy onto algorithmic environments is insufficient and supports a distinct understanding. Therefore, a digital sexual health literacy would encompass algorithmic conditions where access is largely passive, appraisal is multi-register, and understanding is inseparable from the negotiation of gendered norms.