When Media Becomes Sex Ed

Before there was social media, Pornhub or ChatGPT, television and film took the lead in teaching us what sex education looked like. Think about the visual language of the sex ed scene. The anatomical diagram at the front of the classroom. The teacher who would rather be anywhere else. The banana and condom demonstration. The students hiding their laughter behind their hands. The horrified faces. The abstinence lecture. The awkward question that nobody wants to answer. We recognize these images almost instantly.

That familiarity raises an interesting question: Did television teach us what sex ed was supposed to look like, or did television simply hold up a mirror to what was already happening in classrooms? Honestly, it’s probably a little of both.

Popular culture does more than entertain us. The images we encounter establish what we see as normal, embarrassing, desirable, dangerous, or worthy of being taken seriously. Sex education has developed its own visual vocabulary in popular culture, and much of it revolves around discomfort. The classroom becomes a place where sex is whispered about, laughed at, moralized, medicalized, or reduced to diagrams of reproductive organs and warnings about pregnancy and disease.

That matters because the media doesn't simply show us sex education; it can also shape what we imagine sex education is. When the same awkward classroom scene appears again and again, inadequate sex education can begin to feel less like a failure and more like an inevitable rite of passage: Of course sex ed is awkward. Of course the teacher is uncomfortable. Of course nobody talks about pleasure. Of course students aren't going to get all their questions answered here.

This creates a strange feedback loop. Real experiences of inadequate sex education give writers material for television and film. Those representations become familiar cultural images. New generations encounter those images before, during, and after their own sex education experiences. Eventually, it becomes difficult to tell where the stereotype ends and the lived experience begins.

Maybe the more interesting question isn't whether life is imitating television or television is imitating life. Maybe it's what happens when both keep reinforcing the same story about what sex education is allowed to look like.

So what happens when school sex ed has become so futile that it’s practically a long-running joke? Every generation seems to share some version of the same experience: inadequate sex education at school, an awkward and confusing conversation with a parent, or a mountain of misinformation passed along by a friend. So, where do young people actually get their information?

Increasingly, they look elsewhere. A 2024 study found that teens were more than seven times as likely to name social media as their main source of information about sexuality as they were to name school. Pornography has become another source of informal education, with research showing that 1 in 4 young people 18-24 consider porn helpful for learning how to have sex.

Not talking to young people about sexuality doesn’t remove the conversation from the table. It just moves it to another table, one where the information may be inaccurate, misleading, or created for purposes other than education. Young people are still going to have questions about sex, bodies, relationships, pleasure, and health. When trusted adults and educators don’t answer them, they are left to navigate those questions elsewhere.

And now there’s a new seat at the table: artificial intelligence.

In 2026, 44% of surveyed teens reported using AI tools such as chatbots for health information or advice within just the previous three months. Unlike the uncomfortable gym teacher, the embarrassed parent, or even a Google search, AI is available 24/7, answers almost any question without appearing to judge, and never gets embarrassed. Whether or not we intended it to happen, AI is quickly becoming another place young people can turn when they have questions they don’t feel comfortable asking anywhere else.

So what happens when media, pornography, and AI become some of young people’s most trusted resources for learning about sex?

The problem is that these platforms were never designed to replace comprehensive sexuality education. Pornography, for example, is entertainment, not education. It can present sexual scripts that young people may interpret as models for what sex is supposed to look like, while leaving out important conversations about communication, consent, contraception, relationships, and the realities of different bodies. A 2023 systematic review of 19 studies found an association between adolescent pornography exposure and having sex before age 16.

Artificial intelligence presents a different set of concerns. In a nationally representative 2026 study of 3,466 U.S. teens ages 13–17, 17.1% reported receiving false information from conversational AI, 23.1% said they had felt manipulated or pressured, 32.3% had been asked for uncomfortable personal information, and 15.2% reported being prompted toward risky behaviors.

Young people are going to have questions about sex. Avoiding those questions does not make them disappear; it simply changes where young people go looking for answers. That is exactly why comprehensive sex education is more important now than ever, especially at a moment when federal sex education programs are undergoing major changes.

In 2026, the Trump administration terminated 53 of 67 existing grants under the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP), a program created to support evidence-based approaches to preventing teen pregnancy and improving adolescent sexual health. Cuts and changes like these threaten the ability of programs across the country to provide young people with accessible, medically accurate, and trusted information at a time when they need it most.

But young people aren't going to stop asking questions just because the funding disappears.

That is why The School of Sexuality Project is expanding how we make comprehensive sex education available. We want to create online content that is accessible, medically accurate, honest, relevant, and, because sex education doesn't have to be awkward or boring, actually fun.

This is our first step in that direction.

Welcome to Permission Slip, our new online home for comprehensive sex education. A place to ask questions, challenge misinformation, talk honestly about sexuality, and get the information we all deserved to have in the first place.

References

Avripas, S., Comperchio, E., Sekar, A., Fordyce, E., & Dunville, R. (2026, August). Nearly 6 in 10 teens say social media influenced a health-related decision; nearly half use AI for health information. NORC at the University of Chicago. NORC at the University of Chicago

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2026). Risks and harms of conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) chatbot use among US youth. Journal of Adolescence, 98(5), 1597–1606. https://doi.org/10.1002/jad.70164 PubMed

Pathmendra, P., Raggatt, M., Lim, M. S. C., Marino, J. L., & Skinner, S. R. (2023). Exposure to pornography and adolescent sexual behavior: Systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e43116. https://doi.org/10.2196/43116 PubMed

Rothman, E. F., Beckmeyer, J. J., Herbenick, D., Fu, T.-C., Dodge, B., & Fortenberry, J. D. (2021). The prevalence of using pornography for information about how to have sex: Findings from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adolescents and young adults. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 50(2), 629–646. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01877-7PubMed

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Population Affairs. (2026). Replicating effective Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) programs—AH-TP1-26-001: Questions and answers. HHS Office of Population Affairs

Zamponi, V., Mazzilli, R., Nimbi, F. M., Ciocca, G., French, D., Limoncin, E., Lombardo, F., Sesti, F., Todaro, E., Tenuta, M., Caserta, D., Tubaro, A., Gianfrilli, D., & Faggiano, A. (2024). Sexual and reproductive health: Level of knowledge and source of information in adolescence. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 21(10), 872–877. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdae094