Oregon has one of the most comprehensive sex education programs in the country. Along with Illinois, the state earns an A–, the highest grade given, from the nonprofit SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) for its overall sex ed policy, while more than two dozen states get a D or F. Some states don’t require medically accurate sex education or even require sex education at all, despite overwhelming research showing that comprehensive sex education creates better outcomes for kids. What’s more, the Oregon standards are “really modern on issues of sexism, gender roles, and consent,” says Rebecca Darling-Budner, a health teacher at Mt. Tabor Middle School.

So it might come as a surprise that this progressive sex ed curriculum hasn’t specifically addressed sexually explicit media, which includes pornography. If the subject does get any classroom time, it’s tacked onto the edges of other subjects, or it comes up organically in response to student questions.

“I fit in conversations within the abuse prevention curriculum and a class around consent, sexting, and the law,” says Timm Goldhammer, a health teacher at PPS for 30 years, mostly at Lincoln High School. “It’s a delicate topic to cover, but it’s important for kids to know how it can damage their relationship to sex.”

Soon, middle and high school teachers will have a little more guidance. Oregon’s health education grade level standards got a refresh last fall and now call for discussing the impact of sexually explicit media on body image and self-esteem, starting in seventh grade. By high school, the standards include explaining the effect sexually explicit media, as well as social media and artificial intelligence, can have on relationship expectations. School districts are analyzing and planning during the 2024–2025 school year and will be implementing the new standards in fall 2025.

I’m mixed about teaching pornography literacy,” says Darling-Budner. “I don’t feel like enough of the kids are there, or close to there, for those lessons to be age-appropriate. I might be unaware of the level of use, though.”

Many agree with Darling-Budner about holding off on these conversations. But by age 12, more than half of kids in the US have seen pornography, according to a 2022 report from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that provides evidence-based education and information to families in the digital age. Fifteen percent had viewed it by age 10.

Screens are ubiquitous in modern life. Even if kids aren’t seeking out porn, they tend to stumble upon it or are exposed to it by a friend, according to the report. It’s hard to avoid, in part because it’s such a big industry. The US adult online content market was worth around $977 million in 2022. Exposure to this material is a major problem because kids mostly consume mainstream porn—easily accessed and free—that often contains violent, dehumanizing, and/or misogynistic sex. Without more context, this can lead to the belief that these are sexual norms.

“Porn has become America’s default sex education,” Shafia Zaloom, a San Francisco–based health educator, writes in her 2019 book, Sex, Teens, and Everything In Between: New and Necessary Conversations Today’s Teenagers Need to Have about Consent, Sexual Harassment, Healthy Relationships, Love, and More. Zaloom adds, “Do you want Ron Jeremy teaching your kid about sex? Learning about sex from porn is like learning to drive from The Fast and the Furious.”

In an interview, Zaloom elaborates: “Whether you’re pro- or anti-porn is irrelevant. We are talking about kids with developing brains,” she says. “Kids need to know how to talk about this, free from pigeonholing and categorizing. On a larger level, these conversations are about love. How to love and how to be loved.”

Dr. Emily Rothman is a social epidemiologist at Boston University and author of Pornography and Public Health, published in 2021. “We are not helping our kids by shying away from these conversations,” she says. “We need to rise to the occasion and grapple with hard things. Many communities turn away from this discussion, but kids will see porn whether you talk to them about it or not.”

Why do we tend to shy away? Possibly because older generations just aren’t aware of how much porn is a part of kids’ lives, according to Dr. Jenny Withycombe, assistant director of health and adapted/physical education at Portland Public Schools. Parents might think “having the filters on” means their children won’t encounter pornography, but that may not be the case. “The data says that the exposure is increasingly easy,” Withycombe says. “It’s easy to stumble on; you don’t have to go looking for it.”

But it’s also the case that pornography can be broadly condoned, disparaged, or avoided out of shame, guilt, taboo, or controversy. “There’s a lot of backlash on the subject of pornography,” Withycombe says. “There’s pressure to exclude it, as well as gender identity and LGBTQ+ education.” While it’s against the law in Oregon and some other states to exclude those latter topics, and civil rights–minded activists make sure they’re discussed, there’s no similar groundswell around the discussion of sexually explicit media. 

Another issue when it comes to formal inclusion in school lesson plans is that educators are often playing catch-up. Withycombe offers fentanyl as an example of a topic that’s clearly been increasingly important but which is just now being addressed by curriculum developers. And when it comes to digital media and technology, she says, “I always feel like we’re two steps behind the young people.”

Curiosity and fascination about sex are normal parts of a healthily developing human sexuality, and forms of pornography have been around practically as long as we have. However, internet pornography is a different beast. In contrast to dog-earing a steamy passage in a romance novel or sneaking a parent’s nudie magazine, the prolific nature of the contemporary online porn market impacts adolescents in a more profound way compared to previous generations.

“Teenagers, mostly boys, are conditioning their sexual response cycle with porn—a visual, aural, interactive activity in which there is a dopamine- and endorphin-reinforced response that an adult, porn producer, or director has conjured up to make money in a vast and highly competitive market,” writes Zaloom.

That means kids might sync their sexual response to warped sexual scenarios. In her book Yes, Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know about Today’s Teens and Sex, sexuality researcher and educator Dr. Debby Herbenick lays out pervasive characteristics of mainstream porn: impersonal, nonconsensual, aggressive, unprotected, unrealistic in terms of bodies and performance, and focused overwhelmingly on men’s pleasure.

Common Sense Media found that of the 73 percent of teens who had consumed pornography, 52 percent “reported having seen pornography depicting what appears to be rape, choking, or someone in pain.” Subsequently, many kids come to understand rough sex—that includes being choked, slapped, punched, or hit—as typical and expected, according to Herbenick and Zaloom. 

As kids go down this path, according to Herbenick, they travel further and
further away from connecting sex and arousal with nonviolent relationships,
potentially inching toward real-life sexual harm. Sometimes they need more extreme violence and have multiple screens open playing multiple scenes to get aroused. “Kids build up a tolerance,” says Zaloom. “Neurologically, we are made to look for what is novel or new.”

Parents might wonder if the updated standards mean students will encounter actual pornography in the classroom. That’s not the case, says Withycombe. “You don’t have to show it, and you don’t have to get into really specific descriptions to explain what sexually explicit material is,” she says. “It’s so ubiquitous. Most of our students in their teen years are fairly familiar—I don’t mean they’re familiar because they watch it, but familiar because it is something that is so prevalent and discussed in our society.”

Withycombe says the implementation of the new guidelines will focus on “how we understand the influence that sexually explicit material has on us, and how that would line up with consent. So a lot of it would be more discussion-based, that unpacking of ‘What are the messages that are being communicated in these materials, and what does that mean for how we view our relationships?’”

Of course, whatever ends up being squeezed into an already crowded curriculum may only scratch the surface of what kids need, but these are questions parents and other caregivers can ask, too. Creating open rapport with kids can be very helpful. Common Sense Media reports that most kids have discussed sex with trusted adults. Among those kids, 43 percent discussed porn. And 51 percent of the kids who did talk about porn said the conversation “encouraged [them] to think about ways to explore sex or [their] sexuality other than porn.” By embracing open communication and curiosity, caregivers can be the kind of askable adults kids need to help them build healthy relationships, which are a huge factor in overall happiness.

Experts add that it can be very helpful to have ongoing conversations around media literacy in general. Caregivers can ask questions like, Who benefits from this? What does this want you to think? How does it make you feel? What values does this represent? If a kid develops critical thinking around shows, commercials, video games, and other forms of media, they will be well positioned to question packaged porn fantasies, even if they haven’t gone over it in school just yet. 

Conversation tips for parents, educators, and kids

“If we accept the fact that kids will most likely look at porn, we can approach them without judgment,” says Tony Overbay, licensed therapist and the "expert" coauthor of He's a Porn Addict...Now What? An Expert and a Former Addict Answer Your Questions.

“When parents say, ‘This stuff is bad,’ a kid who has looked at pornography thinks they themselves are bad and go into a shame spiral,” says Overbay. “Instead, ask questions. Make it a casual ongoing conversation, not something you talk about once. Try to create a safe space for kids to express themselves.” 

For adults who might feel awkward, Rothman says that conversations don't have to be specifically about sexually explicit media, "but rather about the ways of treating people. If you start with the idea that people shouldn’t hurt each other and introduce social-emotional teaching about healthy, respectful relationships, you address the underlying issues,” says Rothman. “When that groundwork is laid, it’s easy to have more specific conversations about sexually explicit media later on.”

Reading suggestions and other resources

• Yes, Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know about Today’s Teens and Sex by Debby Hebernick
• Sex, Teens, and Everything In Between: New and Necessary Conversations Today’s Teenagers Need to Have about Consent, Sexual Harassment, Healthy Relationships, Love, and More, by Shafia Zaloom
• “How Porn Changes the Way You Teen Thinks About Sex,” a TED talk by Emily Rothman, social epidemiologist at Boston University and author of Pornography and Public Health
• The Truth About Pornography: A Pornography Literacy Curriculum for High School Students, nine sessions, an hour and a half each. 
• It’s Time We Talked, information and strategies for parents and schools
• Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting, a parenting podcast that sometimes delves into media use
• Common Sense Media, tools and resources for parenting in the digital age
• National Association for Media Literacy Education