Debby Herbenick, PhD, an internationally recognized sexuality researcher and educator and author of five bestselling books, joins Zibby to discuss her authoritative, supportive, sex-positive, and facts-forward parenting guide, YES, YOUR KID: What Parents Need to Know About Today’s Teens and Sex. Dr. Herbenick explains her extensive background in sex research and her observations on recent trends, emphasizing the importance of parents staying informed and open with their children. She touches on sexting, internet porn, TikTok, the normalization of choking in sexual activities, the impact of social media, and how to equip children with tools for safe and respectful relationships.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Dr. Herbenik. I am delighted to welcome you on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Yes, You're a Kid, plus what parents need to know about today's teens and sex, plus how to talk to your child about communication, consent, sexting, and pornography. That is quite a subtitle, by the way. Well done. 

Debby: It's toned down from what it was. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I love this. Yes, you're a kid, right? Because, oh wait, someone's kid, right? That's good. You know, like, we all think it's not our kids who are up to anything. Anyway. Okay. First, explain the Why you're the expert who should be right who wrote this book and why you and and all that. 

Debby: Sure I'm a sexuality researcher and educator at Indiana University School of Public Health and I've been in sex research for about 25 years and I study population level sexual health and behavior meaning the trends in the United States of what people are doing and thinking about and how they feel about their sexual lives and in recent years I've been noted a lot of trends that it felt like both as a researcher and a mom.

I was realizing many of my friends didn't know about and, and should. And really, um, once they knew about found that it changed their parenting. So I wanted to share that with, with other parents. 

Zibby: And maybe you wanted your friends to stop calling you in the middle of the night with their questions. So you could be like, just read the book, please.

Debby: You know, yeah, it's a combination of both. They still call, they still text, they still pull me aside at parties. And I, and I do love that part of my relationship with friends too. But it's, there's a lot to learn for all of us as parents. 

Zibby: Can I just jump ahead to something that's been in the news lately that I want to just ask you about, which is this new choking thing that's going on, how kids are incorporating choking into sex and that that's like a normal thing.

Can you talk about that? 

Debby: It is. And so that comes from our research and we've been studying this trend for several years now and finding that it has become very normative. Um, by the time that, um, kids are 18, um, at least in our college studies, more than half of them report having choked or been choked at that point.

And so, uh, a pretty sizable portion of them start between ages 12 and 17. And, you know, they're not bad kids. They're not, you know, they're not out to hurt other people in nearly all cases. Um, most of the time they are getting the message that this is just what people do during sex. And even during making out, so I shouldn't even just say sex, but even sing and making out stages.

So starting some high school, sometimes even in middle school, and they see it in pornography. They see it in popular tv shows and movies, and they hear about it in some of the most popular songs in the country these days on social media. They talk about learning about it in TikTok videos. So, I mean, it's really pervasive in their media, which reflects that they're really a product of their culture rather than focusing on the specific type of sex for any personal reason, if that makes sense.

Zibby: Interesting. So somehow I have missed the consumption of all of that, right? This is clearly targeted to a different age demographic, right? When and how did it sneak in? And I don't want to dominate the whole conversation, but I'm curious, since this seems like what all the moms of kids my age are sort of chatting about right now.

Debby: It is. Yeah. We, we. think it probably started the uptick around 15 or so years ago, the really blowing up phase of that because around 15 years ago, of course, we had the rise of smartphones, which made pornography much more accessible. We had the rise of multiple social media platforms, which made everybody the expert that they could share information to people.

And I think, you know, As a researcher and as a mom, one of the things that I noticed when we were doing this work is we would interview these young people and we would say, well, how did you first learn about choking? What are your early memories of this? And we had several young women who said, well, you know, the memes.

And I thought, what, what memes? And you know, again, like how did I miss this? Because I'm on social media and as a sex researcher and educator, I follow sex related accounts and I see none of these. But what was really striking to me was when I asked my PhD students who are much younger than I am. they also hadn't seen the choking memes.

So it also underscored for me how the media so siloed, right, we see certain things based on our own patterns, our own algorithms, but we miss so much because it's not directed to us. So we hadn't seen those memes, but once we actually knew to look for them, we found hundreds within a few minutes. We just had to know the right terms to use and then there they were.

And so, and the same things, right, with the TikTok videos. If you're not. It's looking at certain types of media to begin with, and you're not the right demographic. You will not see the same things on Tik Tok that your teenager sees, even if you're both on Tik Tok as part of an agreement, right? That we're going to follow you and we're going to be part of each other's network.

Well, it doesn't mean you're going to see the same things that they see. 

Zibby: And isn't part of the danger that there's long term damage to the brain through the choking episodes where there can be obviously. 

Debby: Yeah, there can be. Yeah, there can be. And so it's part of what we're studying. I have a colleague who's a neuroscientist and we've already started some, some lab work that's been in some of the articles about our work.

And so, and it makes sense. I mean, there's actually a vast research on strangulation, which is what choking technically is because it's external pressure to the neck, and it reduces blood flow and or airflow to the brain. And so there's this vast research on strangulation that tells us about risks to the carotid arteries and the neck, which can elevate your stroke risk down the road, about risk to, um, you know, the brain in lots of different ways in terms of your ability to kind of organize tasks, what we call executive function.

I mean, one of the physicians, when we were doing this work, he said, wow, you know, here's all these parents spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their kids education, and they don't know that their kids are doing these things that are kind of counteracting, right, all of their efforts to, to support their brain development and they're learning and their memories because the kids themselves don't know that these things can have an impact on their brain and your brain needs not just oxygen, but glucose. Glucose is in that nice blood. It's it's food for the brain is what I tell my college students. So we really want to keep that, you know, your brain getting the energy and food that it's that it needs.

Zibby: So as part of your work. In addition to doing all the research, making sure people know, like, the dangers of all of these things, like, do you feel like that is what drives a lot of your work? 

Debby: It is, I mean, and to be honest, it's why I wrote the book. And there are other benefits of it too, um, certainly because I, I'm somebody who grew up in a home without a lot of sex education.

And so in some ways I wrote the book that I wish my parents, you know, had had when they were raising me to give them the confidence that they could talk with me about periods and bras and my big feelings around crushes and all of those things that really nobody talked with me about. So most of the book is not about the scarier, you know, kinds of issues.

It's about all of those other conversations. But I also in seeing what I was seeing in my research thought, The world has changed a lot. Most of us are raising kids in a world that we don't really have firsthand experience in. And so there are also dedicated chapters as you go around staying and talking with kids about pornography.

But that direct education to me is, is really critical because most people will not read our research in the journals. But we want it to live in the world and make people's families and, and kids safer. 

Zibby: Well, one of the things you do so well is give parents the tools to just start conversations. And I'm like, I love this.

Like this is, and this, these parenting tips apply not just to talking about sex and difficult topics with your kids, but really anything that is. It's tricky, like, when they ask you, and, you know, I have four kids ranging from nine to almost seventeen, so we, I get all sorts of questions, and sometimes they come at the most random times, and I'm like, this is one of those moments where I should have some sort of prepared answer to this, or how do I answer this question, and like, my god, why now?

But anyway, when you suggest that we say things like, you know, that's a great question, or, You know, what do you, what, what do you already know about this? Like, let's talk about it or, you know, all of that is so important. So what are, what are like the most important things for parents to know when facing the questions that come in all shapes and sizes?

Debby: Yeah, I think it's important to know that you don't have to know everything. We're not going to know everything. I'm a sex researcher and educator and sometimes my kids still ask me things that are new to me because times have changed, right? So it's okay not to know everything. Also to go ahead and try to take that beat, right?

With like the, Oh, Oh, good question. Or where have you heard about that? I mean, not only does that reassure the child and like supports their curiosity, but it does buy you some time as a parent to maybe take your deep breaths. And sometimes I have to take those deep breaths too. And, you know, I, I think sometimes of the time I was taking my kid when.

My older one when she was younger to a tennis class, but I work at university and we were driving through campus and there are signs all throughout campus about, you know, April is sexual assault awareness month. And my daughter was just reading then and she said, what is sexual assault? Well, I wasn't planning to answer that question on that day, but I said, yeah, you know, you can read that.

What a great question. And answer that in a, the most age appropriate way. That I felt like I could with just enough information. And that's another part is just answer the question that you were asked. Don't feel like you have to give a big monologue very often when you answer that question, they're going to move on to some other topic.

If they still need more information, they're almost certainly going to ask for it. So I think supporting their curiosity, knowing you can do it, making sure that you do it, um, don't let the awkwardness keep you from talking with your kids about their. And puberty and sexuality and the hard topics. One of the tips that I suggest is, you know, what we call five minutes a week.

And so I have lots of different tips in the book for different styles of families. But some of my friends have taken that one on and they really do just take five minutes a week. They set a timer and they say, you know, I care so much about you. I love you. I want you to have like a rich, wonderful, you know, relationship and, and so on one day.

And you need information for that. And so I know it's awkward, but for five minutes a week, we're just going to talk. And when the timer ends. We can, we can be done. And if you still want to talk, we can. And very often, the kids end up getting to a place where they do want to keep talking. One of my other favorite strategies came from a colleague who she and her husband are both kind of in, in adjacent fields.

You know, one's a physician and the other one's a sex educator, but none of their teenagers wanted to talk to them about sex. And so they realized though that their kids eavesdropping on grown up conversation. So they stopped trying to talk to their teens about sex and they started just kind of intentionally having these amazing conversations with each other that then within minutes their teenagers would say, wait, what are you talking about?

What's Clipspedia? Why is it, you know, why is it going up in our, in our community? And so they use the sort of eavesdropping style or like letting the kids listen in and that worked for their family. 

Zibby: That's a good one. 

I like that. 

Sneaking it in. What are some of the other trends that you're seeing that we as parents need to be aware of?

Debby: Yeah, I mean, I think certainly being aware of all the things happening on social media with adults trying to get to our kids. And a lot of, you know, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal have all been covering those in recent years. So I'd pay attention to them, but they are things like, you know, some extortion related scams.

And this has happened to families I know, where, you know, with a lot of care and thought and conversation and a parent monitoring app, they finally let, you know, their 13 or 14 year old on Snapchat. And within a day or two, he got, you know, multiple requests for either, you know, we'll send you pictures if you send us, you know, 40 or a gift card or even asking him for pictures.

So there really are organized groups out there on the internet. that have found ways to very quickly, I mean, within days of getting on some of these platforms, um, reach out to your kids. So I do think there's benefit, especially for younger teens with having these parent monitoring apps. You know, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children recently expanded their, um, section on sextortion, and they have phenomenal age appropriate videos from middle schoolers and high schoolers that explain, um, whether from peers or adults, you know, tricky times where people might be asking them for things and sort of how to spot the red flags.

Um, so I think those can be really important even with younger, you know, tweens and teens talking with them about AI and making sure they know not to be creating fake images of their classmates. And as it's, you know, feels age appropriate, making sure that includes, um, no like naked pictures of your classmates, um, because kids don't need strong tech skills and they really just need one or two pictures of their classmate just in regular clothes to feed into these things.

And there have been, you know, I've been giving talks on this lately. And it's so easy to find these headlines if you look on the internet with all these middle schoolers and high schoolers being, you know, having now interactions with the police because they've taken and distributed AI created images of, and it's almost always affecting the girls in their class and distributing them. So we've seen these, these legal cases now. So I think just really letting them know, yeah, you know, it's kind of an interesting time right now with technology, but we still have to like come back to our core values, right? And, and talking about those core values as, as a family, about being safe, being a good friend, not wanting to, you know, to, bully other kids or put them in these awkward situations respecting their boundaries.

We don't make or take pictures of other other kids or teenagers, you know, making them look, uh, you know, nude, whether or not they really were and talking about the impact that can have on other kids so that we come back to their good side and we appeal to their good side that we want them and we know they want to be caring, respectful, good friends, and classmates.

Because really, kids are good kids, right? And, and they do have that, but it can be easy to get sucked into games and peer pressure. 

Zibby: This is very troubling. I mean, good to know, but it's hard. I mean, there are so many dangers that we can. know and worry about. And then these are some that I wasn't even like worrying about actively, which I'm now going to add to the list.

You know, like what if your kid decides to, I mean, I, you know, it's just part of parenting, right? There's just like always more things, always more threats and dangers. And our ability to protect our kids is limited. And it just, you know, slaps you over the head when you hear more things that are, now coming at them.

Debby: It is. I mean, it's daunting. You know, I have a friend with a college age kid now who recently said to me, wow, our relationship is so different now that I don't have to be the media police anymore, right? She's now in a phase where she's an adult and she makes her own choices. And I thought it was, you know, really interesting perspective right on most of us when we went into parenting, we didn't expect We were thinking about reading books to our, our kids.

We weren't thinking about being media police for, you know, five to ten years. And so, that's difficult. But also, thinking too about the many upsides. I mean, I love, love, love, love talking with kids about crushes and the new feelings that they have. And even though there's drama sometimes with relationship issues, it's so much fun.

It's such an honor to support young people in their journey, right, and to help them understand that breakups happen to everyone and rejection happens to everyone and also help them heal and help them learn to express like loving and positive and exciting feelings. So there are a lot of daunting moments, but I think the upsides are still overwhelmingly, you know, what's there for us to connect to as well.

Zibby: And how has all of your work helped your own family and your own parenting? 

Debby: I mean, I've, you know, I've been in this field for so long, so it's just part of who I am now, even though I was raised as somebody who didn't, um, you know, talk about any of these things growing up. Um, so I think it's, it's helped me a lot because we raise our kids in a really fact based way.

We answer the questions that were asked. They have always been the kids who at younger ages knew the correct names for all the body parts and, you know, vulva and penis and could talk about things. And, you know, we have lots of fun memories of hearing them being really little and, you know, wanting and playing games and talking about somebody with their, their baby like in an imaginary game.

 Um, Oh, who's their husband? They don't have a husband. Well, how are they having a baby? Are they using sperm donation? You know, I hear like the answers like, Oh, but you know, we always, we always answered questions factually. And we have friends who, you know, they clearly would say at young ages, well, how did they, um, have a baby because they're two moms.

And so they wouldn't have sperm. So we would just explain, you know, sperm donation. Um, so I think what it's like, it's not a big deal, right? It's just, it. It's just, oh, that's how that happens. Okay. So I think it's, it's helped us raised, you know, it's helped us have a family environment where we hope our kids continue to always feel like they can ask us questions.

We hope that they always feel like they can be supported in their curiosity. We know that things will not always be easy, but, and we won't always have the answers, but we will find ways to get them the answers in ways that support their development. So it has helped me feel more confident, even though at times the things I'm finding in my research scare me as well and worry me as well. 

Zibby: Wow. What if you're just totally mortified to discuss things? Like, it's awkward and uncomfortable. And like, what if your limitations as a person get in the way of your parenting? 

Debby: That happens. So I think, you know, one of the things I do is point out places where you might put sticky notes.

There are some conversations that even the most comfortable parents might say, Yeah, I could talk about this with a friend, but I don't want to talk about this with my kid. But it doesn't mean they shouldn't know it. So, you know, put in, so mark those pages if they're, you know, an older teenager and you feel like the book is something that you're fine with them reading.

Get them age appropriate resources. And I have a whole section in the back of Yes, Your Kid Or, you know, books of different ages and stages from picture books for young kids about consent and boundaries to puberty age books and then high school age books. So sharing books so that they have that information.

If they have that in a book, they are less likely to feel like they need to go on the internet to search that or get that from a friend. The other thing we've done since the youngest ages is really use the idea of the safety network, right? And it's not just about good touch, bad touch. I want my kids at all ages and stages to know who other grown ups are, whether in our family or friend circle, who I trust to answer their questions.

And so even if there's something that they may not want to come to me with one day, I want them to have a few other adults, whether they're aunts and uncles or some of my really good friends, that they know that they can go to. So pointing out those people for your kids.

Zibby: I love that. Giving everybody. I did this when my older kids were young.

I like typed up a, like a, no, I didn't type it up. I hand wrote. Like a phone list I put by the landlines with like everyone's pictures when they were like really little like you can call any of Your grandparents and here are their pictures and phone numbers but that was so long ago and now I'm like I should do that again with like here are people to go to with questions and you know blah blah blah anyway good, good tips.

Lots of good tips. Do you see more books in your future? And what do you really want to write a book about next? 

Debby: I mean, right now I'm really focused on the research. And so I've written some books before. It may be that when another book comes to mind later on, but all of this stuff is still shifting and evolving.

And there are a lot of a lot more challenging things happening. I hate to say that we're kind of, you know, just starting to get into other research. So my, my mind is really focused on that these days, but I. still do a lot of, you know, community talks for parents of, and kids of different ages and stages.

Zibby: Wait, what's something that you're, that you, you know, you were just talking and like kind of grasped your chest in horror, like something you're researching. Can you give me a sneak peek? 

Debby: Do you want a sneak peek? Really? 

Zibby: So start and I'll stop you if I can't take it. 

Debby: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just other forms of rough sex that we're, that we're seeing.

And so one of the ones that. There are two that we're really focusing on. One is that young adults, so I say when I say in adults in this case, it's 18 to 24 year olds. Um, and this came up for my college students. I just kept bringing this up in recent years as they would say, why are guys always slapping your vulva?

And I said, Are they slapping? You know, is this happening? And, and all it took was one student to mention that, and the class really just erupted in conversation about that. So we put that in a nationally representative survey that we conducted recently, and I thought, is this really happening at the scale that I think it is?

And we found that one in four of these young adult women reported having their vulva slapped, quote unquote, with consent, which usually doesn't mean any discussion or conversation. My students described it. Like no discussion or conversation, but, but an acceptance that this is just how things are like, this is just what happens during hookups.

So that's a little unusual. We're seeing some of it with young men too, like happening to them, but mostly happening to young women. And talk with the young men, they tell us they're doing it because they've heard that blood flows to the genitals when a woman's aroused, which is true. And so their idea is that by slapping the vulva that increases blood flow or arousal.

And that is not a good idea, and, uh, it turns, you know, and, and most of our students, uh, women students do not like that, so it's, it's an unusual thing that's happening. The thing that worries me more, though, is something called consensual non consent, or CNC, and a lot of young adults and older teenagers will know what this is.

Um, I find that when undergrads, for example, are interviewing to, to work in our lab and I tell them about the studies that we're doing and I say, we're doing this one on CNC. And before I can even explain what it is, they're like, oh, yeah, I heard a podcast about that the other day. And consensual non consent can look like a lot of different things in a kink or BDSM community.

Um, But common way we see that young people hearing about it and trying it out is essentially role playing a rape scenario. And so, um, and they're not really talking it through in the detail that one would in a kink or BDSM situation. So it's really just sort of, I've heard of this, I'd like to try it.

They agree to try it and it involves really a much higher level of aggression in many cases than, than in their normal intimate or sexual lives. And some of them feel like it goes all right, but many of them don't. And so we've been doing a lot more research on that. And we found that about 10 percent of college students report having engaged in some kind of CNC.

So that is, that is, you know, it's not nearly as prevalent as the choking, which is around two thirds of college women report having been choked, which is just to me a, a very, very high number. Right. I mean, in, in pre in my generation, in previous generations, it would have been like 1 percent that just wasn't happening.

Um, so And we have some concerns, right, that people are using that to kind of gaslight others. Um, we've heard, you know, reports where somebody has an assault that is, it's very clear to them this was an assault. And then the person says, Oh no, that was just, you know, playful. It was just a, it was a role play. I was just pretending. And so they can use that as a cover. Because it's becoming a bit more of a, of a practice that they hear about, especially on TikTok from, from people who seem to be about their age or a little bit older. 

Zibby: Okay, great. The list expands.

Debby: I'm not sure you wanted to hear. 

Zibby: No, I am sure. I'd much rather know and be able to have the conversations and be on the lookout and, you know, just be aware.

I mean, I think awareness is so important for us as parents and just people in the world and all of that. So thank you for sharing. Wow. Well, Thank you so much for coming on. So interesting. So, so important to hear everything you have to say. There's so much more in the book, of course, but this just scratches the surface.

So yes, you're a kid. What parents need to know about today's teens and sex must read. Thanks for coming on. 

Debby: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay. Have a great day. 

Debby: Thanks. You too.