Artificial intelligence is changing how we work, learn, communicate, and create. It’s also changing pornography.
Creating a convincing fake nude image of another person once required sophisticated software and technical expertise. Today, AI tools can generate or manipulate sexualized images in minutes, and the person depicted doesn’t need to participate, pose for an explicit photo, or even know the image exists.
For teenagers growing up alongside this technology, that isn’t a hypothetical future risk. It’s already part of their digital world.
In July 2026, Common Sense Media released Teens in the AI Era: Pornography and Sexual Content, a nationally representative study of 1,314 U.S. teens ages 13–17. Researchers also conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups to better understand how young people are encountering AI-generated sexual content.Mann, S., Zimmermann, L., Radesky, J., & Robb, M. B. (2026). Teens in the AI era: Pornography and sexual content. Common Sense Media. https://doi.org/10.65077/ESUU3962Copy
The findings show pornography exposure remains widespread among teenagers, while generative AI is introducing an entirely new dimension to the problem.
74% of teens surveyed said they had seen online pornography.
And exposure often begins surprisingly young. Among teens who had encountered pornography, more than half first saw it by age 12. Twelve percent reported first seeing pornography at age 10 or younger.
Not all of this exposure is intentional, either. While 43% of teens reported intentionally viewing pornography at some point, 62% said they had encountered it accidentally.
Hoping young people won’t search for pornography doesn’t address the reality of the digital environments they’re navigating. Pornographic material can be found by them, and it’s everywhere.
And now with generative AI, teens can’t tell the difference between AI-generated porn and the real thing.
44% of Teens Have Seen Sexual Content They Believe Was Generated by AI
Common Sense Media found that 44% of teens surveyed had seen sexual or nude content they believed was AI-generated. Among teens who had encountered it, 79% said they had come across AI-generated sexual content accidentally.
This content isn’t confined to obscure corners of the internet either.
Among teens who had seen AI-generated sexual content, 82% reported encountering it somewhere on social media. The report specifically identified platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and X/Twitter. Pornography websites, text messages, group messaging apps, AI image tools, and gaming platforms were also reported sources.
Young people don’t necessarily have to go looking for AI-generated pornography to encounter it. It can appear while scrolling a feed, opening a group chat, browsing another website, spending time online, going to school, or hanging out with friends.
But exposure is only part of the story.
For Some Teens, Deepfake Pornography Is Personal
Perhaps one of the report’s most disturbing findings is who appears in these images. Among teens who had seen AI-generated sexual content, nearly two-thirds had encountered content depicting celebrities.
But 24% had seen AI-generated sexual content depicting themselves or someone they personally knew. That could mean a friend. A classmate. A current or former romantic partner. Or themselves.
***FYI: any sexually explicit image depicting someone younger than 18, real or not, is considered Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and is totally illegal.
AI has dramatically lowered the technological barrier required to fabricate sexualized imagery of another person. A perpetrator no longer needs an intimate image of someone in order to distribute what appears to be one. A normal photograph can potentially become the raw material for image-based sexual abuse.
As Common Sense Media notes, students at Westfield High School in New Jersey used a nudification app in 2023 to create explicit fake images of more than 30 female classmates using photographs taken from social media. Similar incidents have since been documented at schools around the United States.
Nonconsensual deepfake pornography includes individuals turning someone’s ordinary photographs into sexualized content without their consent. As these tools become more accessible, the line between pornography consumption and direct sexual exploitation becomes dangerously thin.
Teens Aren’t Just Seeing It. They’re Creating It.
The report also asked teens whether they or someone they knew had created AI-generated nudes or sexual content.
Nearly 1 in 5 teens—18%—said they had personally created this type of content or knew someone who had. Eight percent reported personally creating it. And because this survey was self-administered, it’s safe to say this number is likely underreported.
Among teens who had created this material or knew someone who had, 63% said the content depicted themselves or someone they personally knew.
Researchers also found a notable gender difference: boys were more than twice as likely as girls to report personally creating AI-generated sexual content, 11% compared with 4%.
And then we have the distribution. One-quarter of teens said they had either personally sent or shared AI-generated sexual content or knew someone who had. Among that group, 44% said the content depicted themselves or people they knew personally.
And this material travels through the same channels teens use every day: disappearing social media posts, private group chats, and direct messages are among the most common ways it is shared.
A fake image can therefore move from creation to distribution incredibly quickly. And while an image may be artificially generated, the person depicted and the harm they experience are real.
Deepfake Pornography Complicates Consent
Pornography has long raised serious questions about consent, objectification, sexual expectations, and exploitation. AI-generated pornography adds another layer.
Someone can now be made to appear sexually exposed or engaged in sexual behavior that never occurred. Their body can be digitally manipulated. Their face can be inserted into explicit material. Their likeness can be sexualized and distributed without their participation.
And when the person depicted is a minor, the issue becomes even more serious. Remember, AI-generated sexual content depicting youth under 18 is considered Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).
This is one reason conversations about pornography cannot be limited to whether someone intentionally visits a porn site. Young people need frameworks for understanding consent, digital manipulation, image-based abuse, exploitation, and what to do when sexual content reaches them unexpectedly.
AI-Generated Sexual Content May Be Changing Expectations About Bodies and Relationships
Deepfakes pose not only privacy and consent concerns. Teens themselves believe this content is influencing how their peers understand bodies, relationships, and reality.
According to the study:
66% of teens believed AI-generated sexual content affects how people their age think bodies should look.
65% said it affects their trust in photos and videos.
64% said it affects expectations of romantic partners.
And 61% said it affects what teens think sex should be like and what consent means.
Among teens who had actually encountered AI-generated sexual content, 60% agreed that it makes it harder to know what real bodies look like. Seventy percent said the material makes them trust online content less.
These findings matter because pornography already has the potential to present consumers with unrealistic scripts about bodies, sex, intimacy, and relationships. Generative AI can push unreality even further. Bodies don’t merely have to be carefully selected, edited, staged, or filtered anymore.
They can be created.
Two-Thirds of Teens Are Worried They Could Become the Next Deepfake
For many teenagers, this isn’t simply a concern about what they might see. It’s a concern about what someone else might create of them.
From the Common Sense study, 67% of teens said they were at least somewhat worried about being depicted in AI-generated sexual content without their consent. Some have already changed their behavior because of that fear.
Among worried teens, 38% said they had become more careful about what they post online. Thirty percent had made social media accounts private, 23% were posting pictures or videos of themselves less frequently, and 9% had deleted social media accounts entirely. And these are the kids who are aware of what AI images can do. What about the kids uneducated on the realities of this technology?
A teenager doesn’t need to have taken or sent an explicit image to worry that a fake explicit image of them could circulate in their school.
Generative AI can create the appearance of an intimate image where no intimate image ever existed. The technology may be artificial. The fear isn’t.
Teens Are Navigating This Problem With Too Little Adult Guidance
One of the clearest takeaways from the report isn’t technological at all. It’s educational.
Among teens who had encountered AI-generated sexual content, only 42% said they would feel comfortable talking to a parent or guardian about disturbing content they’d seen.
Nearly 1 in 5 said they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone and would handle it alone. But do they know what to do?
Only 13% said they would feel comfortable talking with a school counselor or teacher. And remarkably, 10% said they would feel comfortable discussing the experience with an AI chatbot.
Meanwhile, 44% of teens said their school or teachers had taught them nothing about identifying fake or AI-generated content online. Nearly half said better education from adults about identifying AI-generated sexual content would be helpful.
Teens are encountering a rapidly evolving form of sexual content that many adults never encountered growing up, while the institutions surrounding them are still trying to figure out how to respond.
Common Sense Media’s researchers ultimately concluded that teens are largely navigating these issues without adequate guidance from parents, caregivers, and teachers.
We can change that.
We Can’t Wait Until a Deepfake Incident Happens to Start the Conversation
Parents, educators, and community leaders understandably may feel intimidated by these topics. What do you say about pornography? How do you explain deepfakes? How do you talk about consent without creating shame? What do you tell a student who accidentally encounters explicit content? And how can you help young people recognize unhealthy messages about bodies, intimacy, and relationships when technology itself is making those messages harder to distinguish from reality?
Avoiding the conversation doesn’t protect young people from the issue. It only means they may encounter it without context.
That’s why proactive, age-appropriate education matters.
Young people deserve more than warnings about individual apps or websites. Technology will continue changing, and today’s most popular platform may be irrelevant in a few years. What lasts is education.
Young people can learn to recognize how pornography can influence individuals, relationships, and society. They can learn how sexualized media can shape expectations. They can better understand consent and exploitation. And they can learn that encountering explicit content doesn’t mean they have to navigate the experience alone.
Bring This Conversation to Your School or Community
Fight the New Drug’s Live Presentation Program helps make these difficult conversations easier.
Our age-appropriate presentations equip middle school, high school, college, parent, and community audiences with research-based information about pornography’s impacts and the impacts of AI deepfakes so individuals can make educated decisions for themselves.
The presentations are non-religious and non-legislative and have reached over 1 million people. Presenters use research, facts, engaging media, and real stories to help audiences understand the impacts of pornography on individuals, relationships, and society.
And as pornography evolves alongside artificial intelligence, conversations like these are becoming more important.
Teens are already encountering AI-generated sexual content, already seeing it depict people they know, already watching peers create and share it, and already worrying they could become targets themselves.
They shouldn’t have to figure out what all of that means on their own.
If you’re a parent, educator, school administrator, counselor, or community leader, bring Fight the New Drug to your community.
A single presentation can help open conversations that many young people aren’t currently having with the adults around them, and give students research-based information before their next encounter with pornography or AI-generated sexual content, rather than after something has already gone wrong.
Book a Fight the New Drug presentation and help equip your community to navigate pornography, AI-generated sexual content, consent, relationships, and an online world that is changing faster than ever.
Your Support Matters Now More Than Ever
Most kids today are exposed to porn by the age of 12. By the time they’re teenagers, 75% of boys and 70% of girls have already viewed itRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy —often before they’ve had a single healthy conversation about it.
Even more concerning: over half of boys and nearly 40% of girls believe porn is a realistic depiction of sexMartellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.Copy . And among teens who have seen porn, more than 79% of teens use it to learn how to have sexRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy . That means millions of young people are getting sex ed from violent, degrading content, which becomes their baseline understanding of intimacy. Out of the most popular porn, 33%-88% of videos contain physical aggression and nonconsensual violence-related themesFritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.Copy .
From increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and self-doubt, to distorted views of sex, reduced relationship satisfaction, and riskier sexual behavior among teens, porn is impacting individuals, relationships, and society worldwideFight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.Copy .
This is why Fight the New Drug exists—but we can’t do it without you.
Your donation directly fuels the creation of new educational resources, including our awareness-raising videos, podcasts, research-driven articles, engaging school presentations, and digital tools that reach youth where they are: online and in school. It equips individuals, parents, educators, and youth with trustworthy resources to start the conversation.
Will you join us? We’re grateful for whatever you can give—but a recurring donation makes the biggest difference. Every dollar directly supports our vital work, and every individual we reach decreases sexual exploitation. Let’s fight for real love:
