We’ve all seen the chilling public service announcements. A girl is messaging someone online and the conversation appears to be taking place between friends. The person asks for a photo and promises support and care in return. Then the screen splits, revealing that it’s actually an older man on the other end. These dramatic “reveals” are intended to remind us that people online may not be who they say they are.

Ever since we’ve had access to the internet, we have been worried about strangers interacting with our children online. This makes sense. The high stakes of online grooming and sextortion mean that we must prepare children to be skeptical of online-only connections and recognize the warning signs. Just this week, a New Mexico jury held Meta liable for misleading consumers about platform safety and enabling harm, including child sexual exploitation.

Young people are on board. While many form meaningful online-only friendships, youth consistently report wanting stronger privacy settings and protection from unwanted contact from strangers. 

But what if it’s a boyfriend asking for the photo? Not just once, but again. And again. And again.

A new study reminds us that while we tend to focus on risks from online strangers, pressure to send nude images often comes from someone our kids know. 

A Familiar Pattern

This is not a new revelation. I will never forget the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach when I heard a speaker at a child welfare conference remind the audience that “the most unsafe environment for a child is in their home.” The comment wasn’t made to demonize parents or spread panic. It was simply a data-driven reminder that harm most often occurs within close relationships.

It is a sobering reality. It is also a helpful reminder that as we work to buffer young people from online sexual exploitation, we should pay attention to their close offline relationships as well. 

The Line Between Consent and Coercion

The majority of teens today do not engage in sexting, or sharing intimate images, whether with strangers or people they know. It also isn’t rare. According to recent data collected by Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin, co-founders of the Cyberbullying Research Center, about one-third of teens had either sent or received explicit content. 

It’s hard for most parents to imagine that sending nude photos could end in anything but disaster. Sharing nudes is never without risk. But when photos are shared without pressure or coercion and stay with the intended recipient, the research suggests the mental health impacts can be minimal. Unfortunately, unauthorized sharing is common. Hinduja and Patchin found that fully half of teens who shared a sexual image or video had it shared with others without their permission or were subjected to sextortion. This violation can have significant negative impacts on young people’s mental health, school performance, and social lives.

Image-Based Sexual Harassment

A group of researchers recently set out to better understand sexual image requests among adolescents. They make clear that coercive requests are not just annoying; they are a form of sexual harassment. They surveyed over 6,000 young adults about their experiences before age eighteen and found that…

• 90% of those who reported receiving a coercive request for a sexual photo were women.
• More than half of those who received coercive requests did share photos.
• Teens were far more likely to share a photo at the request of a dating partner than a stranger or online-only acquaintance.
• Teens were more likely to comply if requests persisted over time or were repeated multiple times.
• Respondents who shared images when pressured reported significantly worse mental health outcomes than those who didn’t.

Relationship Skills Are the Real Internet Safety

This data is a powerful reminder that warnings about strangers aren’t enough. Kids need us to talk to them about consent, communication, coercion, refusal, and repair. They need to practice these skills in their family and with their friends and dating partners. This is the stuff of real relationships.

We have some work to do. In our focus on sex in adolescence (and our fear of it), we have long neglected essential conversations about values and relationships. The teenage brain is primed for this kind of social learning. Yet as the authors of the Harvard report “The Talk” remind us us, “Most sex education is either focused narrowly on abstinence or is ‘disaster prevention.’” They add, “We as a society are failing to prepare young people for perhaps the most important thing they will do in life—learn how to love.”

The Problem With Dire Warnings

There is nothing like sexting to fuel parental panic. Most of us are hesitant to acknowledge that our kids are sexual beings, much less consider sexual exploration unfolding across the internet. That’s why we so often trot out dire warnings: “One photo could land you in a legal nightmare!” or “Never sext. It will ruin your reputation.” These warnings aren’t entirely wrong. They just miss the complexity of sexting dynamics. They also don’t seem to dissuade young people from exploring their sexuality through messages and photos.

For starters, teens struggle to reconcile dire warnings and worst-case legal scenarios with what they observe playing out around them. It also does little to prepare them to navigate persistent requests or social pressure to ask for nudes. Finally, shame, secrecy, and fear of legal trouble also do little to cultivate the honest and open conversations that protect against harm. When something goes wrong, we want our kids to come to us.

The consequence of not having ongoing conversations isn’t just a rougher start to dating. Our silence around relationships, paired with catastrophic warnings not to send photos, can inadvertently reinforce harmful norms around gender, harassment, and abuse.

Beyond “Don’t Send”

One group of researchers decided to investigate the messages teen girls hear about sexting. Instead of simply telling girls not to send photos, they facilitated workshops that invited discussion about norms, pressures, and expectations. Among other topics, the girls articulated the sexual double standard that shapes these dynamics. Messaging often focuses on girls, warning them not to send images, while boys are largely left out of the conversation. Girls also risk being shamed while boys may gain social status from the same activities. It didn’t take long for the girls in this study to connect the dots between sexting, gender equality, and relationship skills.

The researchers found that shifting the focus toward helping all young people understand and respond to unfair gender norms, harassment, and coercion may better prepare young people to navigate the realities they face than simple “don’t send a photo” messaging.

Talk early and often

• Explore what good friendships feel like. Discuss what good friendships feel like and what it looks like when someone isn’t being a very good friend.
• Normalize sexuality and curiosity. Remind teens that feeling attracted to someone is a normal part of growing up. Adolescence is a powerful window for practicing relationship skills and form a strong foundation for adult partnerships.
• Name relationship feelings. Talk about infatuation, care, attraction, pleasure, and love. What do these feel like? What are the healthy ways that these feelings can play out? When might they become unhealthy? What do you do when something doesn’t feel right online or offline?”
• Build and model the skills. Practice healthy relationship skills like consent early and often. Model listening, repair, conflict resolution, boundary setting, and communication.
• Get curious. Ask your teen directly if they have ever asked for, received, or seen an online nude photo. Ask them if it’s common at their school. Ask why kids might send nude photos. Find out if they think it’s a big deal. Ask them what they’re hearing from adults about sexting and what’s missing from the conversation.
• Share your values. Share your values and expectations about sending photos as well as asking for and sharing photos, using AI to generate nudes, or pressuring others to ask for photos.
• Define the terms. Be clear about what image-based sexual harassment is. Lay out the legal ramifications of sharing naked photos under the age of eighteen. Talk about the harmful effects of being pressured to share photos. Stay open to questions.
• Talk about gender and power. Ask your teen what they notice about how sexting is shaped by gender. Who gets blamed? Who gets status? What do they think is unfair?
• Talk through strategies.  Prepare your child with refusal strategies and ways to handle joking and pressure from peers to ask for nudes. You can brainstorm strategies together like distracting or intervening. You can also give them an “out” by blaming parents. Give them a script like, “My parents always check my phone, they’d for sure find out.”
• Double messages are okay. You can say, “I expect you to prioritize your safety and not engage in sexting. But I also know it can be tricky to navigate so let’s brainstorm some strategies.” Remind them, “If you ever find yourself in a tough spot, I will never make you sorry for coming to me.”

Let’s Not Be Strangers

Online-only risks are real and we should take them very seriously. But over and over again, the data remind us that the internet also mirrors and magnifies offline vulnerabilities, including unhealthy relationship dynamics.

Young people need more than simple reminders to turn off their phones or turn on strong privacy settings. They also need opportunities to build healthy relationship skills, spot double standards, and navigate social pressure online and offline. 

Our kids rarely turn to us and ask for these kinds of conversations. But unhealthy patterns can take root in our silence. Let’s not leave them to figure this out alone.