April 2025: Proactive Tools for Preventing Sexual Assault

Culture Reframed is the premier science-based, global organization working to stop the emotional, behavioral, and sexual harms of pornography to children and youth. Join our online community to receive updates on our work, announcements of upcoming events, and the latest news related to pornography and youth.

This Sexual Assault Prevention Month, we’ve been drawing attention to the effectiveness of porn-critical sex education in decreasing sexual assault. In case you missed our recent webinar on this topic, you can access the full session — an action-oriented conversation with experts Amy Lang and Kerri Isham about how we can proactively equip young people to be resilient to violent media and develop healthy, respectful relationships.

This month, we also take a closer look at the billion-dollar industries threatening our privacy and well-being. In our Q&A with the team at Check My Ads, we explore how digital advertisers contribute to child exploitation by tracking and targeting young users. Alongside this, our latest report exposes how the porn industry has adopted AI technologies, contributing to child sexual abuse and a culture of violence and misogyny.

By raising awareness on these critical issues, we hope to hold these systems accountable and build a safer world for the next generation — online and IRL.

— Nechama Katz
Director of Foundation Relations, Culture Reframed

The $700 billion digital advertising industry’s collection and use of personal data is creating new concerns about online safety, especially for young people. To learn more about this issue and how it can be addressed, we recently talked with Sarah Kay Wiley and Arielle Garcia, leaders at Check My Ads, a nonprofit that advocates for transparency and accountability in digital advertising.

Hundreds of attendees from around the world joined us during Sexual Assault Prevention Month to discuss porn-critical sex education as an essential and effective method to prevent sexual assault. In conversation with Dr. Mandy Sanchez, sex education experts Amy Lang and Kerri Isham shared invaluable insights and resources for parents, educators, and professionals to utilize in their efforts to proactively confront this crisis. Read highlights from the conversation and sign up to watch the full recording below — and stay tuned for our next free webinar in our new “Reframing the Conversation” series.

Culture Reframed Founder Dr. Gail Dines was interviewed by Adrian Parham on the “Trauma and Mental Health Report” podcast, where they discussed how pornography harms society’s view of relationships, intimacy, sexuality, and masculinity.

Did you know our free Porn-Critical Sex Education Curriculum has an entire section dedicated to Digital Literacy? These sessions have been designed to develop digital literacy to support healthy, safe, and ethical media use. The purpose of these sessions is to support young people in developing media literacy skills and identifying healthy media practices. Create a free account, then visit Step 7 for the Digital Literacy Sessions.

As a companion to our recent report on how the pornography industry’s growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) contributes to adult misogyny and violence, our research team now presents a report on how AI sexual programs, devices, and images pose real and compelling dangers to the social, emotional, and physical development of young people.

Here’s where you can find the Culture Reframed team next month:

Health Professionals for Safer Screens

April 29 | 12–1 p.m. EST | Virtual

Normal Violence: A Critical Conversation on the Normalization of Sexual Violence in Our Culture

April 29 | 3 –5:00 p.m. EST | CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY

2025 Annual Sexual Violence Prevention Summit

May 14–15 | Sutton, West Virginia

Deepfake Nudes & Young People: Navigating a New Frontier in Technology-Facilitated Nonconsensual Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (Thorn)

Drawing on a survey of 1,200 young people aged 13-20, this research explores their awareness of deepfake nudes, lived experiences with them, and their involvement in creating such content. Read more and explore Thorn’s free parents’ guide to protect children from deepfake nudes.

Laila Mickelwait | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von

Activist Laila Mickelwait recently told the story of her ongoing fight to expose the biggest porn sites in the world, through her movement #TraffickingHub, to an important audience on the This Past Weekend podcast. She also spoke to the crisis of childrens’ exposure to pornography, highlighting Culture Reframed Clinical Consultant Heidi Olson’s vital work to demonstrate the link between porn exposure and child-on-child sexual abuse. Watch now.

‘Adolescence’ Has Sparked a Digital Safety Debate: A New Report Offers a Fresh Approach to Tackling Online Harm (World Economic Forum)

Reaching beyond policy, the report urges a shift to prevention, with online harm treated like a disease. Read more.

“Can’t Look Away”: New Documentary on Online Safety Examines the Dark Side of Social Media (Democracy Now)

The director and a lawyer from the Social Media Victims Law Center discuss the film and the tragic consequences that the algorithms of Big Tech companies can have on children and teens. Read more.

Pornography May Be Commonplace, but a Growing Body of Research Shows It Causes Lasting Harm to the Brain and Relationships (The Conversation)

Pornography has been present through all of human history—so, what’s different about it now? Read more.

Our supporters make our work possible, fueling our mission to create a healthy, equality-based culture that supports young people’s well-being. Donations from our community strengthen and extend our global impact, allowing us to produce free and accessible resources. We invite you to join our community of Culture Reframed Champions by setting up a monthly gift. Together, we can build this movement to address the emotional, behavioral, and sexual harms of pornography on young people.

Sign up here to receive updates on our work, announcements of upcoming events, and the latest news related to pornography and youth