Young people have been "immersed in images, memes and videos that turn people into bodies, sex into a performance and relationships into transactions", says Naomi Miles, CEO of the charity CEASE. File photo / Getty Images
The UK’s new under-16 social media ban aims to restrict access to highly sexualised content – but it can’t reverse the damage caused, experts say.
When Dr Lauren Bull, a sexual health consultant for Britain’s National Health Service, asked the 16-year-old girl sitting in her London clinic if she enjoyed having sex with her boyfriend, she noticed a subtle – but unmistakable – change in her expression.
This, Bull says, is “a very important question, because for younger women it gives me a good insight into their relationship dynamics”.
The teenager went on to explain: “My boyfriend says I don’t look like I enjoy it.” When Lauren gently repeated her initial question, the girl replied: “I don’t when he strangles me.”
This conversation may sound shocking, but it is one happening regularly in NHS consulting rooms up and down the country. “It was incredible how normalised this experience was in her mind,” says Bull, who has taught sex education to thousands of children and sits on the Adolescent Specialist Interest Group of the British Association of Sexual Health. “She wouldn’t even consider saying, ‘Don’t do that’ to her boyfriend, or ‘Maybe we could talk about it before you do something like that?’”
Louise Barraclough, sexual health nurse and Associate Director of Safeguarding at the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, has found that in recent years her consultations have begun to mirror Bull’s experience.
“The mainstay of my work, before the end of the 2000s, would be a 14- or 15-year-old girl coming in saying ‘I’m madly in love, I want to go on the pill’ or ‘I want to have sex, please can I have some condoms?’ Now teenage girls tell me, ‘My boyfriend wants to choke me, he says it’s normal’ or ‘My boyfriend wants to have anal sex, he says everybody else is doing it.’
“I am picking up a confusion about what these young women really desire, what they are told everybody else is doing and what is expected of them,” explains Barraclough.
“The ages of 14 and 15 are critical developmental years when it’s a matter of social death if you don’t fit in with your peer group. It takes a pretty brave teenager to say, ‘actually, I don’t think this looks very nice’.”
It all changed, Barraclough believes, with the arrival of high-speed internet and smartphones, which gave easy access – via social media – to highly sexualised content and pornography.
In a bid to combat this and other concerns, Britain’s Labour Government this month announced a social media ban on under-16s, blocking children from most platforms including TikTok and Snapchat by raising the age limits for access from 13 to 16. It comes hot on the heels of last week’s government directive designed to force the big tech companies to block explicit images on under-18s’ devices.
Currently, the average child in the UK is given a smartphone at the age of 10, according to a 2025 survey. By the time they go to secondary school, 90% own one.
Research for last year’s report 'Sex is kind of broken now’: Children and pornography by the UK Children’s Commissioner found that social media and social networking sites such as X, Instagram and Snapchat accounted for eight of the 10 most common ways children encountered porn. Over half said they had seen content featuring strangulation before they were 18 – before the Government outlawed pornography depicting choking or suffocation in June 2025.
James, a 21-year-old university student, started watching porn out of curiosity at the age of eight. When his shocked parents found out, they put a block on his phone to prevent him watching adult content, but he would simply “look when I was at a friend’s house instead”.
By the age of 11, James was watching porn twice a week on his phone, which he found by searching hashtags on Instagram. By 12 he was having sex. “Porn was my only experience of sex,” he admits. “I was the first in my year group to be sexually active and I certainly wasn’t talking to my parents about it.
“I felt pressured to have sex when I was younger – a combination of my peers and social media. Now I wish I hadn’t, I was doing something too adult too soon.”
He believes his mistakes could have been avoided if he’d had better guidance. “The social dynamics of sex weren’t covered at all in sex education lessons, it was merely anatomical,” says James, who went to private school in Oxfordshire.
Ultimately, his exposure to sexualised imagery and porn shaped what he looked for in a girlfriend. “Porn makes you assess women for how they would perform sexually. I gravitated towards women with hypersexualised physical attributes – their breasts, lips, bum – as I thought there was more chance they’d be sexually active,” he says.
Then adds: “Often because men are consuming porn they don’t know how – or want to – speak to a woman. And many women, understandably, don’t want to be viewed in the way porn depicts them and this is creating a divide between the sexes.”
Pleased though he is about the new social media restrictions, he remains sceptical about whether it will work. “Censorship can only go so far. Children will always find a way to look at sexual images and porn if it exists, like I did.
“I think there should also be more focus on telling young people what healthy sex looks like. These subjects need to be talked about openly in schools or they will be taboo.”
Naomi Miles is the founder and CEO of the charity CEASE (The Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation), which she set up to address the cultural and commercial causes of sexual harm. She welcomes the under-16 social media ban, but says that “although it will help future generations, it can’t reverse the damage that has already been done to many young people”.
“They have been immersed in images, memes and videos that turn people into bodies, sex into a performance and relationships into transactions. We know this is having a devastating impact on their expectations and attitudes.”
Dr Elly Hanson is CEASE’s Strategy Director and a Clinical Psychologist who has researched what she calls social media’s “parasitic online ecosystem” which encourages people to consume sexualised content and to keep scrolling.
“Children’s feeds are awash with this kind of content simply because so many people make money from it,” she says. “As a psychologist, I am really concerned about how this is distorting young people’s approach to sex and relationships. Fundamentally they have a right to develop a sexuality free from these attempts to shape it to corporate profit.”
Hanson says this content teaches them that sex is about “transaction, performance and objectification”.
“Research shows that when people see women primarily in terms of their physical sex appeal, they come to see them as being less intelligent, less sensitive to pain and less deserving of ethical treatment. This helps to explain the high rates of harmful sexual behaviour we’re dealing with right now,” she says.
James stopped watching pornography four years ago, having seen a documentary about the exploitative nature of the industry and hearing male influencers speak about the negative consequences of porn use.
“It wasn’t until becoming an adult that I realised sex could be spontaneous and that it’s better to go with the flow,” he says. “I am now being myself and listening to and understanding women more and, as a consequence, I find relationships much more fulfilling.”
By clinical psychologist Dr Elly Hanson
1. Delay smartphones and social media where possible
The later children gain access to internet-enabled mobile devices and social media, the lower their likely exposure to pornography and other harmful content. Every year of delay makes a difference.
2. Keep the conversation open
Talk regularly and age-appropriately about relationships, bodies, sex and online experiences. Make sure children know they can come to you if they see something upsetting or confusing online – that you won’t be cross, even if they haven’t followed online safety advice.
3. Use parental controls and safety settings
Enable device-level protections, content filters and age restrictions to significantly reduce the risk of exposure.
4. Create healthy digital boundaries
Keep devices out of bedrooms overnight, encourage screen use in shared family spaces, and set clear expectations around online activity and time limits.
5. Teach children to think critically about what they see online
Teach children how algorithms shape what they see online and why platforms often prioritise attention-grabbing and sexualised content. Model and talk about core values like respect and kindness and how they are so important in the realm of sex.