Some healthcare service providers and autonomously-run school governing bodies in the United States are resorting to text-based sex education services to help teens discreetly access accurate information on sexual health, reports the New York Times.

According to the daily broadsheet, high school juniors from Chicago can subscribe to a text message based service to get relevant information on relationship issues, contraception, and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

The text-based programmes are easy to access and some of them can offer useful insights on the wellness of sexual health in a contemporary way, notes the New York Times. Citing the experience of a high school junior from Denver, Colorado, the daily says some programmes can render the most accurate information on a given query, without disclosing the identity of the sender.

What makes the texting programme stand apart from web-based help is that you don’t often get the “best information” from a Google search, the New York Times quotes the executive director of one of the short messaging service organisers from Oakland as saying.

The broadsheet says it is not easy to teach sex education in classroom settings, which is why text-based services are growing in popularity and acceptability amongst the adolescent students. Besides, it is somewhat difficult to outline a proper syllabus for sex education and mark it as a priority, admit a majority of the experts.

In defence of the new scheme, the New York Times says the texting services can help save lots of money for the authorities and can also be used as a convenient tool to directly reach the high-risk groups that are increasingly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and infections. It may be noted that the rate of unplanned pregnancies is also higher in teens compared to sexually active women in their 20s and 30s.