There's one scene in HBO's new drug and sex-filled teen drama Euphoria that perfectly captures how easy access to the internet and porn is influencing young people's real-life experiences.
A high school boy is getting hot and heavy with a high school girl. He's kind and respectful; she's enthusiastically consenting. When they prepare for intercourse, though, things take a sudden turn for the violent.
The sweet boy throws her on the bed, forces her arms up, grabs her by the throat -- not minding her choked protests. Thankfully in this case, the girl is comfortable enough to push him off with a forceful, "Stop." He immediately drops the act, apologizing. When she asks incredulously why he'd do all that, he explains sincerely: "I thought you liked that."
The show ties this kind of extreme miscommunication directly back to the pervasiveness of porn in young people's lives today, who have no idea what to make of the sexual behaviors they see in the most popular adult content readily available to them online.
"Parents tend to underestimate how much their teenagers know and have seen," said Emily F. Rothman, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University and sexual violence prevention researcher who developed a porn literacy class for youth.
If kids are on the internet, the likelihood that they've seen porn is high. A nationally representative study in 2007 found that 42 percent of kids aged 10 to 17 who used the internet had been exposed to online porn in the past year, with 66 percent of that group reporting unintentional exposure to it.
Despite the ubiquity of pornography, no nationally required sex-ed curriculum specifically addresses it. And there's not much hope for that to change anytime soon. Small strides toward more comprehensive sex ed in California even recently received severe backlash, with some parents saying pictures of female genitalia constituted "pornography."
By and large, the onus of addressing porn's potentially harmful messaging and misinformation has fallen on parents, who have few resources to help them do so successfully.
Indie adult filmmaker Erika Lust launched The Porn Conversation, an online tool with age-specific guides and resources for exactly that. She too wrestled with how best to address the issues of the industry she works in with her daughters, who were 6 and 9 at the time.
"As parents, we need to have these conversations and stop pretending it's not happening or that it doesn't exist."
"We have to recognize that porn isn't just a little niche genre anymore," she said. "It's become an important part of mainstream, everyday culture. As parents, we need to have these conversations, stop pretending it's not happening or doesn't exist. We need to talk to our kids about what we don't like in the mainstream porn that's out there."
There's never an ideal time
The imperative for parents to talk to their kids about porn is simple: If you don't, no one will. You leave them to navigate a confusing, potentially dangerous virtual space alone.
"The problem stems from having unfettered access to porn on the internet and no tools currently to help young people understand it," said Rothman. Which is why she and several other researchers developed and tested a porn literacy curriculum.
A pilot program for the class in Boston included two dozen students aged 15 to 24, but it was made up mostly of teens. It took place over five weeks and nine sessions. While only officially offered once, the researchers have since offered training sessions upon request and hope to formalize workshops in the future.
The curriculum applies the concept of media literacy -- equipping young people with the information needed to critically analyze and evaluate the messages and values in the media they consume -- to porn. That way if class participants encounter porn in the real world, they would be able to question the sexual scripts, attitudes, and behaviors they see.
It's a tactic that has been used before to address media's influence on kids, like when schools began teaching media literacy to prevent tobacco and alcohol use among youth, and found success.
While neither for or against porn, the curriculum was admittedly not neutral. Instructors sought to counteract the harmful gender roles often embedded in the violent, coercive, and misogynistic porn that dominates the free porn sites most easily accessible to kids.
"A lot of young people are now turning to porn thinking that's the way you should always have sex."
Several studies suggest the overall lack of comprehensive sex education is making young people view porn as an educational resource. A majority of the porn literacy students, for example, listed porn as their primary source of information on sex.
"When young people go to Driver's Ed, they learn that the car chases on TV or in movies aren't how you learn how to drive," said Nicole Daley, who co-authored and taught the porn literacy curriculum. "But in the absence of any formal sex education that includes the mechanics of how to have sex, a lot of young people are now turning to porn thinking that's the way you should always have sex."
Young people often don't understand that porn isn't real, but rather a performance for entertainment purposes, the porn literacy researchers found. Like that scene in Euphoria, that dangerous misunderstanding can encourage reenactments of the violent, punishing sex normalized by porn.
Parents often still hesitate to address porn though as they are caught up on the idea that talking to kids about porn will make them look for it. But the porn literacy researchers found their students reported no increased interest in watching after learning more.
As Lust put it: "Do you think that if you don’t talk about alcohol to your kid he will never drink it? Do you think that not talking to your kid about drugs will keep the drugs away from him?"
Understandably, though, talking about porn together is daunting for both a parent and child. But, you can turn those hard conversations into opportunities.
There's no hard answer for when to start having these conversations, but Daley said, "it's never too early to plant the seed, letting them know that this thing exists, which makes it less taboo for them to come talk to you about it if they stumble on it."
Once kids reach or move past prepubescence and develop curiosity about sex, discussions about porn can become a chance to help your child establish a healthy foundation for intimacy. Potentially, it could even be essential to creating a better sexual culture in general.
Teaching porn for a better world
Half of Rothman and Daley's literacy class focuses on practical information about the realities of the porn industry, history, messaging, and sexual myths it propagates. The other half asks kids to consider their own ethics and values in the context of explicit content, and seven other types of non-sexual intimacy they can engage in (like understanding how other people think and process their worlds, developing dependency and trust, feeling comfortable opening up and being vulnerable, and being comfortable enough to just hang out in silence together).
It's about using the attention-grabbing topic of explicit media as a vehicle to engage kids in the more "boring" topics of what healthy, respectful, consensual relationships look like.
"Bringing up that there's a whole lot of ways to have rewarding intimacy with someone in addition to the sexual one seen in pornography is like seeing light bulbs go off in their eyes," said Rothman.
Talking about healthy intimacy with kids is essential for parents, whether you have conservative views on sex or not.
"Even if you think your child should wait until marriage, you should be talking to them about what happens when they get married," said Daley. "Understanding what consent means is something universal."
"Understanding what consent means is something universal."
Neither the porn literacy class nor the Porn Conversation online tool nor any reputable resource on the topic should ever suggest parents offer their kids more positive alternatives to harmful free porn sites. It's outright illegal for anyone under 18 to view them.
But in general, non-judgmental, shame-free approaches to these discussions are essential. More than anything, conversations around porn should be level-headed and educational, giving young people the full picture and space to form their own ethical opinions about it. Flat out lying to your kids, no matter their age, is never helpful.
"The way that adolescents learn and decide to change their behavior is when you recognize that they are their own being on the verge of being able to make their own decisions," said Rothman. "It's about saying to them: You get to have a perspective. You can actually choose whether this is good for you or not. That's more effective than telling them to passively take in information and never think about it again."
Even as you're cautioning your kids about the potential risks and harms associated with watching porn (especially at a young age), it's equally important to acknowledge how it can be a normal and healthy part of a grown up's sexual life.
"We don't yuck someone else's yum," said Rothman, referring to shaming people for sexual proclivities. "That helps create an environment where your kids feel better about asserting what they want and what they don't want -- whether it's during sex or not during sex."
How talking to your kids about porn teaches consent
This approach to conversations about porn and sex goes back to teaching kids what consent truly means. Being extreme in your views on porn, whether positive or negative, can create a precedent for young people to view sexuality as something dictated to them by someone else.
"Very authoritarian parenting styles can set kids up to expect to take orders from a partner, or to give orders. We don't ram any one perspective on pornography down their throats because, if you think about it, what does that teach them? That we don't respect you to think for yourself, make your own choices, do what we say, hate what we hate, like what we like," said Rothman.
Instead, the key is establishing firm boundaries that still respect your kid's agency and needs.
"That creates an environment that empowers people to advocate for themselves to be respected -- and recognize when they're not," said Rothman. "If your kid can achieve that with you as a parent, it's all the more likely they'll be able to do that with a partner."
Like alcohol, talking down to kids by declaring porn unequivocally bad or forbidden can even have the adverse effect of making it more appealing. As Daley said, it's also sure to alienate kids who have seen porn before, making them less likely to tell you about it.
It's not just porn -- kids learn toxic sexual scripts from other media like YouTube and TV, as well. But again, Daley sees these all as opportunities for teachable moments. She suggests watching TV with your kids occasionally, to not only get a sense of the messages they're receiving but also as an easier avenue to awkward conversations.
"Sometimes it's easier to discuss sex when it's one step removed and about a character on TV. Explore these topics by asking what they think about a certain scene or storyline."
"We need to reorient our understanding of sex and young people, to help prepare them for a better future."
In the right context, porn can be constructive. It could help marginalized LGBTQ folks discover their sexualities (although not always in a positive way) or adult couples communicate their wants to each other.
Teaching young people porn literacy can not only set us all up for a better sexual culture, but also potentially create a demand for better porn in the future.
"The multi-billion dollar pornography industry responds to the desires of their consumers. If we're able to create consumers who are savvier, who want more ethical porn, who understand healthy relationships -- there's always the possibility that the industry will swing in that direction," said Daley.
At the end of the day, the issues raised by kids watching porn are rooted in larger cultural problems. An inability to talk to young people about sex has led us to put off vital conversations about consent at an integral developmental stage of a person's life.
"We need to reorient our understanding of sex and young people, to help prepare them for a better future," said Daley. "It's all about giving young people the tools for this very important part of their life, even if it's in the far future."
