Porn and the Rise of Rough Teen Sex

Parents can no longer afford to turn a blind eye

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about the recent New York Times article, The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex, by

Peggy Orenstein

that lays out just how dangerous—and how mainstream—sexual asphyxiation (colloquially called “choking”) is among teenagers. The entire must-read piece is very disturbing, of course, but one line in particular, pissed me off.

Orenstein writes, “I’d like to point high school health teachers to evidence-based porn literacy curricula, but I realize that incorporating such lessons into their classrooms could cost them their jobs.” In other words, the moral taboo around sex in the United States means that many schools can’t address the pervasive influence of online pornography, including choking—a sex act that is portrayed as titillating and normative but as Orenstein reveals, “can damage our brains, impair intellectual functioning, undermine mental health, even kill us.” The average age of first exposure to pornography is twelve years old and by age seventeen, three-quarters of teenagers have viewed online porn.

The United States is painfully out of touch when it comes to sexual health and education.

In fact, there’s no federal mandate for sex ed in the United States, and as of 2023 only twenty-five states and D.C. require both sex and HIV education. In states where sex ed is compulsory, programs typically stress abstinence, focusing on the perils of sex, and most don’t require sex education to be medically accurate. That’s right, your children might be deliberately fed misinformation about, say, the effectiveness of condoms and other contraception to skew their behavior in favor of the morality standards of the adults who run the state. The magical thinking goes: if we tell kids sex is bad, they won’t have it. In fact, teenagers who’ve received abstinence-only information still have sex before marriage, they’re just less likely to use contraception or to be tested for STIs. Inconceivably, many states that don’t teach kids about sex and pregnancy also restrict or ban abortion.

Sex ed as violence and rape prevention

Comprehensive sex education (CSE) is crucial not just for preventing pregnancy and STDs, but it’s also credited with reducing sexual violence and rape, in part because it helps debunk common myths found in porn. It also unpacks the complex and confusing emotions that often accompany sex, teaching how desire, pleasure, and safety factor into healthy relationships. Jaclyn Friedman, an educator, activist, and the author of several books about sex, power, and consent makes that point in her essay about preventing sexual violence:

…when I’m asked to share a story about why I’m so passionate about sex ed advocacy, I don’t tell a story about the sex ed I deserved but didn’t get. I tell a story about the sex ed someone else didn’t get, and that I deserved for them to have.  

When I was 20 years old, I was sexually assaulted by someone I knew. He wasn’t someone I was dating or even liked, but we were at a party together, and he followed me back to my room uninvited.  

In the aftermath, it became clear that this was not a guy who was used to thinking about how his actions affect other people, a guy who had never once considered the concept of consent, and one who definitely didn’t think he would face any consequences if he just took what he wanted. In other words, the guy who hurt me had been failed by his sex and relationships education, and I have been forever harmed by the education he didn’t get.  

Friedman is right and there is plenty of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of sex education. She goes on to say,

A 30 year meta-analysis of studies on the effectiveness of sex education found, among many other benefits, that quality sex ed reduces the odds that students will be the perpetrators or the victims of violence. It also increases the likelihood that students who see others being targeted will do something to interrupt the abuse.

Research out of Columbia found, too, that when girls received CSE prior to college, including learning specific skills for refusing sex, they were 50% less likely to be sexually assaulted in college. And a Dutch longitudinal study showed the more a child had learned from their school’s porn literacy education, the less likely they were to see women as sex objects.

But science, schmience, I guess.

From online porn to college dorm

Abominable sex education makes it even more likely kids are turning to free porn for information; porn that follows a relatively homogeneous script that looks something like this: Sexual encounters begin without negotiation, sometimes suddenly. The man is in charge, is often rough, and the woman plays along, usually gratefully, even if it began by force, because women enjoy domination and degradation. Sex ends once he has an orgasm. So the porn that girls—or certainly their male partners—are seeing tells a powerfully different story from the one most parents want for their daughters. And, I hope, for their sons.

Boys who’ve viewed a lot of porn fantasize about and incorporate the behaviors they see into their sexual scripts with girls. The more porn boys and men see, the more likely they are to use dominant or sexually aggressive behaviors in sex, such as spanking, calling their partners “slut,” “whore,” or “bitch,” pressuring them into doing things they don’t want to do, such as penile gagging and ejaculating on their faces, often believing this means doing sex well. Twenty-two percent admitted to slipping their penis in a partner’s anus without first asking. As for choking, nearly two-thirds of women in a survey of 5,000 students said a partner had choked them during sex, most of whom were not asked first. The issue isn’t kink; it’s that, increasingly, even when boys have girls’ consent to mess around or to have sex, they see rough sex as a natural extension of it and don’t ask their partners for further consent.

What can parents do to fill the gap

Aside from lobbying your kids’ school district to include porn literacy curricula if it doesn’t already, we know open communication about sex between parents and children makes a difference in kids’ sexual choices and can teach them to respond more critically to explicit material. Given some kids are stumbling on porn even younger than age twelve, we should introduce the concept to them at around age eight. As with all sexual health, sex educators suggest multiple brief conversations over time, not just a single talk.

Our overarching job is to help place porn and the erotic on opposite ends of a spectrum for our kids and to equip young people with the skills to decide what they want. Porn teaches them real intimacy is unerotic. We want kids to know that what is sexy is consent, respect, and intimacy, not the sexist hostility depicted in porn. Ideally, we want to teach them about sex and about porn before porn defines their under- standing of sex or traumatizes them.

We want younger kids to know the basics: porn is people performing sexual acts for a camera; it’s made for adults and isn’t appropriate for children. Once they’re a little bit older, be clear without being judgmental about wanting them to avoid porn and explain why. You might say something like “I’ll be brief, but I want you to hear why it’s not appropriate for you to watch porn: It’s unrealistic and I don’t want you to ever think that’s what sex is like. It’s often violent, particularly against women, and shows them and people of color in stereotypical and demeaning ways. Lots of studies show it can warp a young person’s understanding of sex, and I want you to be able to write your own story of intimacy with other people, not have your desires and what makes you feel connected to another person prodded by online algorithms.” They urgently need to hear too that choking is never okay, not even in most BDSM communities. If part of their interest in porn is learning about sex, let them know you’re open to any questions and can send them some alternatives for learning about it. Amaze.org and Scarleteen.com are excellent resources for all things sex ed.

You can also let teens know there are more ethical and realistic kinds of porn, which are usually behind a paywall, so they don’t feel shamed if they saw and liked porn. But all kids should hear that most easily accessible porn is made for and by men and doesn’t take women’s actual desires into consideration. For older girls specifically, you might add something like “You probably know better than me that porn is shaping the landscape of sex, so I want you to be aware some boys are going to have unrealistic or even dangerous expectations of sex. You get to have your own expectations for what sex looks like.” The caveat is that girls can also enjoy porn (and kink), so if we frame it as something only boys benefit from, we risk shaming them for feelings and experiences that diverge from that narrative.

Ultimately, our message is good sex happens in the space where their desires and their partners’ overlap. And no one gets, ya know, brain damage.

[NOTE: You can find much more about teaching kids about boundaries and consent in my book available for preorder now]

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In honor of #SAAM—Sexual Assault Awareness month (April)—and #SexEdForAll month (May), I wrote a piece for Stop Sexual Assault In Schools—an organization brimming with resources. You can read my tips for addressing sexual assault with kids before it happens and if it happens here: