Sex @ SXSW is in its own full-swing: Sexerati has landed, been conservative for no decent reason about giving out promotional buttons (ask me for one!), and has had a chance to even bump into some of these fine panelists. Here’s the last in this interview series, a two-for-one with the co-presenters of Sex Ed Online: How Teens Self Savvy, Karen Kreps and Karen Rayne.

Dr. Karen Rayne provides advice and support to parents on how to educate their children and teenagers about sex and sexuality. Karen’s knowledge about adolescent development and education provides her with a solid background for guiding parents through these tricky conversations. She also occasionally moonlights as a sex educator for the children and teenagers themselves.

With more than two decades developing interactive content for the Web and computer-based training, Karen Kreps published the book, Intimacies: Secrets of Love, Sex & Romance, a collection of columns she wrote for The Good Life magazine. For seven years at Austin’s BookPeople, she’s hosted monthly public discussions about “Intimacies.” She blogs about relationships at True Intimacies. Through her company, Net Ingenuity, Karen enables other people’s success by helping them communicate clearly online and in print. She’s attended every SXSWi and twice served on panels.

MGG: I’ve heard a number of adult educators working with youth & teens around sex ed online express that they need support around how to approach youth-centered online spaces. How do you position yourself, as adults, in youth/teen sex education online? What role to you enter into online spaces as — as educators, as parents, as mentors, as one there to listen only and not jump in?

Karen Rayne: It’s important to strike a balance in these spaces. As an adult sex educator, I find myself primarily drawn to sitting back and listening. However, there are two times when it is appropriate to jump in as an educator and as a mentor: when someone asks me a direct question or when correct information is clearly missing.

By and large, teenagers are interested in adults’ thoughts and information. They just don’t want it shoved in their faces when they already have it. I find I do a lot less work and get a lot more respect from teenagers if I listen a lot and talk only a little and only when necessary. It’s the same, really, online or IRL.

MGG: Some of the sex educators and therapists I’ve worked with still have some anxiety over the idea of anyone — especially teenagers — looking to the web for their own sex education. They’ve been told that since there’s no one vetting what’s out there, that most of the internet is trash when it comes to accurate sex ed. How would you handle these concerns from other educators?

Karen Kreps: It can be challenging for teens–or for anyone—to discern real experts from those who merely brag about their past sexual escapades. Over the past decade, a few studies vetted the accuracy of online sex information–but none of them were conclusive. I believe that, with the advent of social media and user-generated content such as wikis, the accuracy of information is progressively becoming more reliable. Given that anyone can create web content, it is, of course, possible for biased, out-of-date, or incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions, incorrect information is usually corrected quickly. Thus, the overall accuracy of the information is improving all the time. There is extensive and reliable information on several excellent, straight-taking and entertaining websites whose content comes from research organizations affiliated with universities. For example, Sex, Etc. from Rutgers University and Go Ask Alice from Columbia University, public interest groups like San Francisco Sex Information and experts like Karen Rayne, Scarleteen and the Midwest Teen Sex Show are well-vetted sites for teens and by teens.

The area where there may be widespread misinformation — due mostly to bias — involves sites that promote abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education. Studies published in the online journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy by the University of California Press reveal that abstinence-only programs, such as 4parents.gov, fail to change sexual behavior in teenagers, provide inaccurate information about condoms, and violate human rights principles.

MGG: It feels like we need to give more attention to the fact that there are people out there curating and enriching to the body of sex ed available — people like Heather Corinna, and Nikol Hasler, and many others — who could not do what they do if they had to spend most of the last few years they’ve been working in the field getting what some people would consider appropriate credentials first, when working online so intensively has been a form of training itself. What skills make for a good sex educator working with teens & youth, and where can adults go to find those skills supported & strengthened?

Indeed. I spent quite a few years getting what people consider appropriate credentials. Le sigh. However, much of my sex education work is with parents, and I find that having the credentials helps parents feel more comfortable with me than they did back before I had them. I did find graduate school to be a place where I learned how to communicate effectively with adults about adolescent development and why certain kinds of sex education were appropriate and necessary.

Teenagers, however, rarely care what my credentials are, and nor should they. In order to be an effective sex educator, you need:

• a broad and deep range of information about sex and sexuality
• an intrinsic sense of how to effectively mentor teenagers
• knowledge of and experience with the gadgets and online world of teenagers
• and a wide and bottomless well of humor

Only the first one of these can really be learned in the classical sense, although the other three can certainly be honed and improved through experience.

As to where or how to learn these things? Well, basic sex education is taught at most colleges and universities (under the rather sterile title “Human Sexuality”). Some of these courses are good – but to be a really good sex educator, you’ll need to go beyond the information presented in these introduction courses. I’m trying to convince the college where I teach to offer Advanced Human Sexuality, but so far it’s not happening.

For the other skills, you have to learn by assisting people who are already really good sex educators and by looking in some depth at the high quality sex ed sites online.

This career path seems to rely primarily on the apprenticeship model. I occasionally wear another hat and teach current and future science and math teachers at the college level. With background in both the formal and the informal teacher prep, I deeply appreciate the benefits of the apprenticeship model. It has the potential to prepare teachers (i.e., sex educators) far more effectively for their work than the formal, classroom model.

MGG: This is a question I also asked Keely Kolmes, about her panel, “Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks” — There’s just too much airtime paid to fears that the internet is at best, an alienating place that reduces our ability to connect and be intimate, and at its worst, is a dangerous place where exposure to sexual violence is assumed to be the norm. Flipping all of that — what potential do you see for the internet to deepen relationships, expand our capacity for affection and pleasure, and increase our skills and experience around sexuality?

Karen Kreps: In January, the New York Times reported:

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force examined the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children. But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

It has become very difficult to avoid highly sexualized material that is intended for an adult audience. It exaggerates human sexuality to the point of freakishness. Parents, mentors and educators play key roles both in monitoring what young children can access and in helping them interpret what they find online. Parents can use a website with sexual content as a springboard for conversation with their kid. But older teens and adults can enjoy the privacy and anonymity of the Internet to enter a brave new world, rich in sexual insight.

Try to imagine a ninth-grade boy raising his hand in Sex Ed and asking how to bring a woman to orgasm. It’s not going to happen in a classroom where the teacher and students, awkwardly meet face-to-face. But now such questions are being asked—and answered—online. Until now, most public sex education has been focused on health and safety. And what kids learn from parents (if they’re lucky enough to have folk who will tell them the “facts of life”) or their friends has been limited to the confines of the parents’ or friends’ knowledge and moral understandings.

The Internet is creating a paradigm shift in traditional sex ed. It throws open the window on sexuality and intimacy, democratizing access to new levels of understanding and skill. Just a few generations ago, the ancient teachings of Tantra Yoga were secrets shared only with select initiates. Now all one have to do is Google it to learn. The Internet has spread new Sex Positive concepts and provided in-depth discussions of polyamory. We are no longer limited to only knowing what Mommy and Daddy knew and told us about the birds and the bees or books we could find and read in private. We can learn about how other people make love, broaden our experience from the safety of our homes without risk, and adapt as much as we please in our personal lives.