THEORIES & REFERENCES
Everything we do and decide for our project is research-based, from what platform we use, to what information we provide to our audience.
Current Situation in Hong Kong
We decided gender equality as our issue of concern as we are deeply interested in the topic, and also observed that Hong Kong is lacking in such a type of education. Sex education, which includes the education of gender and its equality if it is complete, is not mandatory in Hong Kong. There exists a guideline for it for any schools who would like to implement it. However, that guideline is from 1997 and has never been updated since. The lack of materials to teach it and lack of training for teachers also contributed to the problem. Parents also take part in the problem by discouraging the discussion of sex or gender-related issues. Schools take parents’ opinions as their first priority as they determine the student intake of schools. All these interact with the fact that Hong Kong has a culture of a mix of Chinese traditional thinking and western ideologies. However, in terms of sex education, Hong Kong people still seem to take a more conservative stand.
Soical Media Usage Among Teens
We chose to utilize Instagram as our platform due to its merits as proven by research. The youth population, which includes our target audience, has been very active on social media, with 81% of that population using it (Madden, 2013). This is especially true for Hong Kong when compared to its neighbouring Asian countries, with 71% of the entire population, about 5.44 million people using it. With the feature of posting photos and hashtags on Instagram, it forms an identity presentation and status and recognition for these youngsters. Therefore it is a great way for our target audience to find a platform that represents what they support, and freely speak their minds. Spreading health (gender for us) information on social media can also help raise awareness of these issues and provide knowledge and information to our community (Akram & Kumar, 2017).
