蜜桃影视

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In more than nine years as a sex educator, I鈥檝e heard a lot of things in my classrooms. But a comment from a boy no older than 12 particularly struck me. During a lesson on consent and healthy relationships, he insisted that 鈥渁ll girls liked to be choked.鈥� 

I initially thought this was an attempt to make the class laugh or get a rise out of me. Then I realized he wasn鈥檛 joking. He genuinely believed it because that was what the internet had taught him.

As a sex educator and a mother of a young boy, I recognize that the internet makes parenting infinitely harder. Content that once festered in the darker corners of social media 鈥� where masculinity means dominating, controlling and overpowering women 鈥� is now mainstream, reaching young people at an age when they are still learning what relationships are supposed to look like. This is the content I hear repeated back to me by middle schoolers in my classroom, and it鈥檚 the same content that will start filling my son鈥檚 algorithm the moment he鈥檚 old enough to have one. 

Exposure to this type of content isn鈥檛 rare. of boys ages 11 to 17 regularly see these sorts of posts on their feeds, and many parents remain blissfully unaware of what their children are captivated by online.

As parents, our greatest goal is to raise happy, resilient, kind and empathetic adults. We sing songs about cleaning up together, teach our children not to hit and coach them through feelings too big for their small bodies. But those tiny hands will eventually grow to shape the world around them. 

Parents cannot wait until adolescence to talk about consent, and schools need to give young people comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education before the internet fills the vacuum. Whether children are 5 or 15 years old, they need to be taught consent, boundaries and respect. If we don鈥檛, something else will.

Sex educators have long sounded the alarm about online content that glorifies violence against women. This 鈥渕anosphere鈥� sweeps up boys during their formative years, telling them that being kind and respectful of others will be their downfall. It reaches them during a period of insecurity, identity formation and an intense desire to fit in, offering a rigid model of masculinity rooted in power and control. It promises dominance, access to women鈥檚 bodies and success, if they just keep clicking and perhaps buy some supplements using the code in a creator鈥檚 bio. Social media algorithms can steer boys toward these influencers when they are simply looking for information about health and fitness, confidence or how to talk to girls.

Keeping young people from absorbing messages that conflate masculinity with domination and coercion requires more than parental controls or hopes that they will scroll past the worst of the internet. It takes comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education that begins long before they start dating, and parents who reinforce those lessons at home. 

Young children can learn the difference between safe and unsafe touches, that their bodies belong to them and that other people have a right to their own space. As children get older, those lessons should grow with them: how to communicate boundaries, recognize pressure, handle rejection and understand that another person鈥檚 body is never something they are entitled to. Consent is often reduced to the 鈥測es鈥� someone gives before sex, but it is much bigger than that: It is a foundation on which healthy relationships are built. Learning that should not depend on whether a child has a parent who knows how to start the conversation.

Schools should give students the tools to recognize coercion and to question messages about sex and masculinity they encounter online. Parents should continue those conversations at home, early and often, even if it鈥檚 awkward. Teach toddlers that they can say no to a hug. Talk to middle schoolers about what consent looks like. Ask teenagers what they are seeing online, and listen to the answer. 

Policymakers also have a role to play. Because sex education policy is largely decided state by state, young people鈥檚 access to accurate information depends heavily on where they live. In many states, lawmakers push abstinence-focused approaches, restricting what educators can teach and leaving students without basic information about healthy relationships and their own bodies.

Some states are moving even further in the wrong direction. So-called are gaining traction across the country, including in Ohio, where lawmakers have proposed requiring public school students to watch videos about fetal development beginning in elementary school. Medical experts and reproductive health advocates have criticized these videos for presenting misleading information by using up-close shots that misrepresent fetal development while downplaying the risks of pregnancy. Requiring ideologically driven material in classrooms that and reinforces harmful gender stereotypes does nothing to help young people understand consent, coercion, relationships they are already experiencing in person or content they are being fed online.

The federal government should be helping states close those gaps. Funding for sex education programs should prioritize medically accurate, evidence-based curricula that teach consent and healthy relationships. It should also support community-based organizations and trained educators who can give schools expertise and resources they often lack. Unfortunately, the government is instead investing millions of dollars in the , which promotes abstinence and the importance of marriage. Meanwhile show that abstinence-only approaches result in higher rates of teen pregnancy and births, even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors. 

Concerned educators, parents and citizens should tell their elected officials that they oppose these types of measures and want real sex education that emphasizes medical accuracy, consent, respect and healthy relationships. Elected officials should support programs that allow children to learn about these topics in a safe, supportive environment. A lack of comprehensive sexual education harms children and only leads them to search for answers in all the wrong places.

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