Parenting in a Pornified Culture: Why Young People Need Adults Who Really Get It

Highlights from a Culture Reframed Webinar with Dr. Gail Dines and Dr. Mandy Sanchez

Today’s tweens and teens are growing up in what Culture Reframed founder Dr. Gail Dines calls “a pornified world”: a landscape overwhelmed with hypersexualized images, pornography, and predators. For many parents and caregivers, the online environment their kids move through every day feels like a whole new world compared to what they experienced growing up.

In a recent Culture Reframed webinar, Parenting in a Pornified Culture, Dr. Dines and Director of Programming Dr. Mandy Sanchez unpacked what this environment looks like, how it harms young people, and why trusted adults are more crucial than ever. They also shared practical tools to help parents transition from feeling overwhelmed and uncertain to informed, confident, and actively protective.

“The Parenting Naiveté Gap”

One of the biggest challenges to protecting kids online, Dr. Dines explained, is what she describes as the Parenting Naiveté Gap: the widening disconnect between what kids are actually seeing online and what adults think they’re seeing.

Most parents know pornography exists. Far fewer realize that:

• Exposure often begins around age 11, sometimes earlier
• Mainstream porn is now overwhelmingly violent, degrading, and misogynistic
• Porn is functioning as the de facto sex education for many young people

“When an 11-year-old boy types words such as ‘boobs’ into a search bar, he’s not prepared for what comes up,” Dines said. “Instead of a nude body, he’s confronted with extreme content that blends sex with humiliation, aggression, and harm.”

That shock alone can be traumatizing — a mix of confusion, shame, arousal, and fear that kids are often left to process by themselves. Because adults often underestimate the level of violence or assume “my kid wouldn’t look at that,” many young people feel they have nowhere safe to go with what they’ve seen.

The result? Kids are navigating a porn-saturated world largely on their own.

Growing Up in a Pornified Culture

The webinar underscored that pornography is only one part of a larger pornified culture. Ads, pop culture, fashion, gaming, and social media all contribute to a steady stream of hypersexualized, often demeaning images of women and girls, and especially women and girls of color.

As Dines pointed out, these images don’t just influence how kids see others. Over time, they teach girls to see themselves as sexual objects and boys to link masculinity with dominance and control.

Research shows that when girls internalize this self-objectification, they’re more likely to experience:

• Anxiety and depression
• Body hatred and disordered eating
• Risky sexual behavior and early sexual activity
• Self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and school disengagement

Boys who regularly consume porn, especially violent porn, are more likely to:

• Develop distorted beliefs about sex and relationships
• Prefer pornography over real-life intimacy
• Engage in sexually aggressive or coercive behavior
• Experience sexual dysfunction, even at very young ages
• Suffer from anxiety and depression
• Underperform at school

“This isn’t just about ‘inappropriate content,’” Dines emphasized. “It’s about how a global industry has hijacked our kids’ social, emotional, cognitive, and sexual development and is shaping their expectations about sex, consent, and connection.”

Beyond “Good or Bad”: The Digital Environment Kids Actually Live In

Dr. Sanchez expanded the lens to the broader digital environment where kids spend their time: social media platforms, gaming worlds, AI chatbots, and more. Rather than labeling technology “good” or “bad,” she encouraged adults to think in terms of safe vs. unsafe and healthy vs. unhealthy.

Kids are encountering:

• Hypersexualized ads and influencer content in their feeds
• Platforms whose recommendation algorithms actively nudge users toward more extreme material
• Gaming spaces where sexualized avatars, porn-themed mods, and explicit role play are widely accessible
• AI tools and deepfake technologies that make sexualized or abusive images easier than ever to create and share

Even when kids aren’t seeking out porn, the design of many platforms makes it easy to stumble into harmful content.

“The problem isn’t just what’s already out there,” Sanchez noted. “It’s the way this content is pushed, recommended, and normalized in the spaces our kids use every day.”

Porn as a Public Health Crisis

Culture Reframed approaches pornography as a stealth public health crisis affecting children, families, and communities. The harms are social, emotional, cognitive, and physical, and they don’t fall evenly. Young people who’ve experienced trauma, are in foster care, are neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, or differently abled face heightened risks.

“We’re not going to ‘ban’ the internet. But we can regulate the porn industry, raise awareness, and build kids’ resilience and resistance so they’re not left at the mercy of predatory systems.”

Because of this, Dines and Sanchez stressed the need for a broad, multi-layered response:

• Regulation and policy: Strong age verification laws for both accessing and producing pornography, and meaningful accountability for the industry.
• Education and training: Support for schools, community organizations, health professionals, and child advocacy centers to understand what kids are facing.
• Family-level support: Research-based guidance for parents, caregivers, and other trusted adults on how to talk with kids and respond when they’re exposed.

“We’re not going to ‘ban’ the internet,” Dines said. “But we can regulate the porn industry, raise awareness, and build kids’ resilience and resistance so they’re not left at the mercy of predatory systems.”

What Parents and Caregivers Can Do

A key message of the webinar: It’s never too early and never too late to start these conversations, and you don’t have to do it perfectly. Sanchez shared several practical starting points:

• Begin with the basics at any age. Correctly naming body parts, talking about body boundaries, and introducing consent in simple, age- and developmentally-appropriate ways lay the groundwork for later, more complex conversations.
• Scaffold information. As kids grow, build on earlier conversations. Instead of one big “talk,” aim for ongoing, open dialogue about media, relationships, and what they’re seeing online.
• Look for warning signs. Changes like suddenly hiding devices, withdrawing from friends or activities, spending excessive time in the bathroom or on screens, sleep disruptions (especially with devices in the bedroom), or secrecy about online friends can signal that a child is struggling.
• Stay present and curious. Kids didn’t choose this digital environment — they were born into it. Approaching them with empathy, curiosity, and a genuine desire to understand their world makes it more likely they’ll come to you when something is wrong.

“We reduce risk by up to 75% when trusted adults are knowledgeable, skilled, and confident in these conversations,” Sanchez noted. “Kids don’t need us to be perfect. They need us to be engaged.”

Watch the full webinar, “Parenting in a Pornified Culture,” to hear more from Dr. Gail Dines and Dr. Mandy Sanchez, including how pornography has evolved in the internet age, why regulation matters, and how adults can help kids develop healthy, respectful, and egalitarian views of sex and intimacy.