Growing Up in a Pornified World: What Kids Are Really Navigating During Puberty

Highlights from a “Reframing the Conversation” Webinar with Dr. Cara Natterson, Dr. Gail Dines, and Dr. Mandy Sanchez

This fall, kids went back to school carrying more than notebooks and calculators. They brought changing bodies, developing brains, and a digital world that never turns off.

That was the backdrop for Culture Reframed’s September webinar, “Navigating Puberty in a Pornified, Digital World.” Pediatrician Dr. Cara Natterson joined Dr. Gail Dines and Dr. Mandy Sanchez for a candid conversation. Natterson is the author of The Care and Keeping of You and the founder of Less Awkward, a company on a mission to make growing up more comfortable for kids and the adults who care for them. They discussed what young people today are really navigating and how parents, caregivers, and professionals can get ahead of it.

A Different Kind of Adolescence

The awkward moments of growing up haven’t changed much, Natterson said. What has changed is where they happen and who sees them.

“My awkward memory of sixth or seventh or eighth grade is set by the school lockers, or it’s set in my living room,” she said. “It is not in front of an audience that includes all of my friends, maybe my teachers, maybe their parents.”

Dines noted that much of what adolescents do is developmentally appropriate. Today, though, it happens in constant public view.

“No wonder anxiety and depression are so present amongst kids today,” she said.

Natterson cautioned that for Generation Alpha, “this is all they’ve ever known.” She added that research connecting social media and anxiety remains “a very complicated, messy field.” Her advice for frustrated adults is to pause first: “These kids are drinking from a fire hose of information, much of which they’re actually not even seeking,” she said. “Let me stop and think about how it feels to be them, and then I can engage in conversation.”

Changing Bodies, Developing Brains, and the Algorithm

Puberty is starting earlier than many parents expect. Natterson explained that the average onset is between ages 8 and 9 for girls and between 9 and 10 for boys. Yet the brain’s emotional center and its long-term-thinking prefrontal cortex do not tend to balance each other until somewhere between 25 and 30.

Girls face particular risk early on because their changes are visible, Natterson said. Boys “very quickly … catch up in terms of risk.”

Add in a culture that sexualizes kids, adults who were never taught to talk about any of it, and algorithms that pull users into echo chambers. The result is a generation of kids without guidance.

“These kids are not looking for this content. It comes looking for them,” Natterson said.

“The fifth-grade group chat can devolve into sending nudes. Porn sites are one click away on a Discord server, on Pinterest, on Google Maps.”

Dines described the stakes. A 10-year-old boy’s curious Google search can catapult him “into a world of gruesome, cruel, brutal sexual violence.” Trauma can then leave a child without the words to tell an adult what they’ve seen.

Why AI Chatbots Can’t Replace Trusted Adults

“The AI chatbot question was not a question a year ago,” Natterson said. “Now I’m asked about it every day.”

Many kids treat AI like an encyclopedia for questions they’re too embarrassed to ask an adult. But it often gets puberty wrong, claiming it starts at 11 or with a first period.

On questions about bodies, health, and sex, “the role of AI, to me, is (at least today) a non-role,” Natterson said. That gives parents an opening to start the conversation themselves. If face-to-face feels too intense, they can talk side by side, like while walking the dog.

Kids shouldn’t be punished for turning to AI or landing on porn sites. “The kids are being targeted by the creators of this technology,” Natterson said. “How can it be their fault that they’re on it?”

The approach kids say works best is a parent who tells them, “No matter what happens, you are not in trouble. I just want to help you.”

Online Safety Is More Than Screen Time

Natterson recommends a “belt and suspenders” approach. Kids tell her that rules make them “feel safer because it makes them feel seen.” But pushing against limits “is their job,” she said. “And they’re very good at their job.”

School cell phone bans help, but they don’t cover the hours after school. They also don’t stop kids from using a school iPad or laptop. What works better, parents and kids tell her, comes down to three things:

• Geofencing. She compared it to airplane Wi-Fi, where you simply can’t log on.
• Self-setting limits for older teens. “They’re overriding themselves now, not you.”
• Above all, talking about it.

She recalled a talk she and Dines gave more than a decade ago. A father asked whether he could just buy his son Playboy instead of letting him find online porn. Natterson still uses Dines’s answer today.

“It is not your job to curate your child’s sexual development. It is your job to recognize what is out there,” Natterson said, paraphrasing Dines, “and to protect your kid from it, and to be in endless conversation about it with your kid.”

Protecting Kids Is a Cultural Responsibility

“We don’t shame and blame anyone other than the porn industry, the social media industry, and the lack of backbone of politicians and policymakers,” Dines said.

Yet pornography remains largely missing from the conversation. Even at conferences on child sexual abuse, Culture Reframed is often the only organization raising the topic. “It is the job of a culture to protect their children from pornographic images,” she said.

Natterson pointed to siloed feeds as part of the problem. “If my social media is just showing me pictures of cute puppies,” a parent may assume their child is seeing the same thing, she said. “That’s where our culture falls apart.”

Pediatricians should raise these issues at every visit, she said, and schools should teach them. That teaching can start as early as kindergarten with the anatomical names for body parts. Children who know those names are at far less risk of sexual predation. To a predator, they signal “this kid has an adult who cares about them, whom they can talk to.”

“It is on all of us to educate and to engage in conversation about this, no matter how uncomfortable that might be,” Natterson said.

Starting the Conversation, Early and Often

For the back-to-school checklist, Natterson suggested a rule that “all devices get charged outside of the bedroom at night.” They should be charged somewhere central, since kids’ choices about what to share and view tend to worsen as the night goes on.

When talking with kids, don’t lecture. “Ask them questions. Listen to what they have to say,” Natterson said. “If they don’t want to engage … ask them again another day.” Dines recommended starting early, because “by 13, your child considers you the most stupid person who ever walked the earth.” Her advice is to partner with your kid, not just parent them.

Can these conversations be traumatic for young kids? Natterson said the research points the other way: “There is zero connection between education and experimentation.” Still, “you know your kid best,” she said. One way to find out where your child is: “Have you ever heard the word porn? … Can you tell me what you think it means?” Whatever the answer, it’s an opening.

Natterson recently dropped her son off for his junior year of college. As they hugged goodbye, she told him, “Don’t forget, porn is not real.” His response: “Really, Mom?”

“Really,” she said. “If you can talk to your kids about pornography, you can talk to them about anything.”

The full webinar also covers the audience Q&A, including how today’s TV compares with online pornography. You’ll also hear more of Natterson’s and Dines’s stories from raising their own kids.

Watch the full webinar here: