Healthy Sexual Development

  1. How to Protect Your Child from Being Harmed from Cybersex: Teach them Resilience

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    During the course of researching my book, The New Age of Sex Education: How to talk to your teens about cybersex and pornography, I came upon the research of Pamela Wisniewski and her colleagues. Dr. Wisniewski's research focuses on teen internet safety and parental mediation styles. In non-scientific terms, her work helps us understand how teens navigate risk on the internet and how different parenting styles and parenting behaviors affect the behaviors of teens online. Her work is very timely and offers wonderful suggestions on how to help your child navigate the online world safely. In this…Read More

  2. CAUGHT YOUR KID LOOKING AT PORN? HOW WE SHAME CHILDREN

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    Anyone who has heard me lecture or has been a client of my practice knows how concerned I am about how our culture shames sex and sexuality. The sex addicts I work with have such an enormous sense of shame about their addiction. Their partners have their own sense of shame about being in a relationship with a sex addict. Our culture shames sexuality all the time. I have become more and more uncomfortable about how the media is handling the topic of pornography use among adolescents. If you do a Google search about kids looking at pornography the predominant language is “caught.” “Caught…Read More

  3. Teens Want Sex and Relationship Advice: FROM THEIR PARENTS

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    A study recently published in the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) provided excellent insight into what teens are looking for when it comes to sex and relationship education. The study surveyed several thousand men and women aged 16 to 24 and asked them very specific questions about sex and relationship education. The adolescents were asked the following very pertinent questions in the face to face interview: “When you were growing up, in which ways (listed on their survey) did you learn about sexual matters?” “Looking back to the time when you first felt ready to have some sexual …Read More

  4. Why Teens Sext: Social Emancipation through Messaging

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     Sexting is in the news nearly every day.  We hear about adults getting arrested for sexting minors or minors getting in trouble for sexting each other. I have even seen news articles where parents turn their own children into the authorities when they find out they have been engaging in sexting.  Our world (or at least the media and the law) view sexting among adolescents as child pornography and a legal issue.  This view, however, does not take into account any differences between consensual and non-consensual sexting.  It also does not take into account the fact that sexting among adol…Read More

  5. How Does the Internet Affect Adolescents? What the Data Tells Us

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    As a sex addiction therapist, I tend to see the negative side of internet pornography.  The people that come to me have problems with cyberpornography.  The research tells us that about 10% of all users of online pornography end up having a problem (or addiction).  What about the other 90%?  Some people manage to be “recreational” pornography users and report no issues at all.  So what about adolescents?  Does this trend apply to teens as well as adults? In 2012 a group of researchers published a review of the data on the effects of online pornography on adolescents.  Though there i…Read More