Real Talk users are in 49 states and 40 countries!

Hello Real Talk community,

We’re excited to share that Real Talk has been downloaded more than 2,000 times, reaching users in 49 states across the United States and 40 countries; the countries with the most users outside of the U.S. include France, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We’ve more than doubled the number of downloads in the last month and will be exploring additional marketing strategies in the coming weeks beyond our current Instagram ad campaigns (see example below).

Teens continue to share their personal stories with us through the app and we pair stories with high quality resources from credible sites including TeensHealth, Sex, Etc., Amaze.org, and Planned Parenthood. Here is one of the stories that was submitted this week:

How do u say no to society? Okay so I’m a part of the LGBTQ community. So me and my gf were at the mall and we were walking around holdings hands. I felt kinda weird because she’s my first gf. So anyways we were walking and this old man out of no where says ew. I started to freak out inside so i stopped holding her hand. That same day we went to a school dance and a slow song came on and we started dancing. While we were dancing I felt uncomfortable because I thought people were judging me because I was dancing with a girl. The thing is no one knows that I’m bisexual and I feel like people are going to make fun of me because of it. So that night after the dance we went home and she texted me that she had a great time and that after the slow dance she wanted to kiss me. I replied with “I’m glad you had a great time. I’m just not ready for the whole public thing yet.” I felt awful because she wants to be a “public couple” but I’m not ready yet. I just want society to be okay with love. It doesn’t matter what race, gender or sexuality you are. -- Female, 16

“I just want society to be okay with love. It doesn’t matter what race, gender or sexuality you are.”

— Female, 16

We will continue to monitor the search results in our app so that we can source relevant stories to publish. We are seeing trends for what kinds of topics are in high demand and are working to have sufficient stories available for all of these in-demand topics. Some of the most commonly searched topics in Real Talk include relationship, acne, puberty, and periods.

In the next few weeks, we will be hosting our first annual MyHealthEd, Inc. board retreat in Chapel Hill, NC and working with teens to prototype ideas for new features in our next build phase. Please reach out to Liz (liz@myhealthed.org) if 1) you work with teens who might be interested in testing out some new features OR submitting stories to be included in the app or 2) you work with teens and are willing to help us spread the word about Real Talk (we’ll provide the materials/social media posts). We look forward to working with more teens across the country!

Cheers,

Liz, Vichi & Cristina