Scarleteen is owned and operated by Heather Corinna and a handful of international volunteers, some who are young adults themselves, and currently serves from 20,000 - 30,000 teens and young adults, as well as parents and educators, every day of the year. While some adults also use Scarleteen to glean sexuality information for themselves, Scarleteen is compiled and written for a young adult population, primarily based in the information that population directly asks us for, and much of our information is more appropriate for teens and young adults than for older adults.

Scarleteen began in 1998 when other young adult sex education sites were not yet around. It wasn't exactly planned: rather, via a different website, emails started coming in from young adults with sex questions they couldn't find answer to online, making clear there was a need for a website like this. We didn't have a mold or a precedent for anything like Scarleteen, so we built the site -- and maintain it still -- based on what our users were and are asking for, some sound educational theory, and have taken the sort of approach our users have expressed being most comfortable with over time.

Scarleteen and its content has been lauded by such organizations as SIECUS, UNICEF, Planned Parenthood, The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, Family Health International, the International Association for Adolescent Health, The Boston Women's Health Collective and more. Scarleteen is usually the highest ranking sex ed site online, despite the fact that we don't have a big organization behind us or any public funding, nor have we ever run any advertising anywhere. Scarleteen is not somewhere a user will get to by being misled or misdirected: it's 100% opt-in education most users find through search engines, partners, friends, teachers, other sexual health or teen organizations, parents or mentors. Scarleteen is as popular and well-known as it is primarily because of word of mouth amongst young adults, advocates and educators, and we think that says quite a bit.