After TikTok-famous Nurse Holly posted a short video calling abstinence "the best way to prevent STDs," legions of social media-using nurses loudly—and creatively—denounced her claim.
An opinion shared on a social media platform seems equally likely to be buried instantly under a mountain of new content with every passing second. Or that opinion can catch like wildfire, make the rounds and be on everyone's radar by dinner time.
But if, like @nursehollyofficial on TikTok, someone has 1.7 million followers, those odds skew a bit. Nurse Holly learned that the hard way and suffered the old internet onslaught.
Nurse Holly's inbox...
The TikTok video in question has since been deleted on account of the storm it produced.
But despite the video's deletion, it kicked around Twitter plenty before Nurse Holly made that choice.
In response to the backlash, Nurse Holly told Buzzfeed:
"I understand that my voice will not be accepted by many as it's an unpopular view. This video was simply created with the intention of helping little girls see that saving sex for one partner may have certain benefits."
Most of the fruits of that backlash are the myriad ways nurse's responded to Holly's public-school-health-class ethos.
Of course, plenty of non-nurses were not shy about criticism.
And just like that, TikTok became the catalyst for lively, informative debate about contraception and public health.
The book Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between: The New and Necessary Conversations Today's Teenagers Need to Have about Consent, Sexual Harassment, Healthy Relationships, Love, and More is available here.
Jane Rosenberg
Jane Rosenberg
@arianagrande/Instagram
@arianagrande/Instagram